office@ke-na.org

ke-na- artists’ initiative is an international arts organization and network that empowers and supports artistic research and practice, while creating sustained opportunities for learning, exchange, and selfguided growth for cultural practitioners and emergent leaders. ke-na- was founded in 2024 in Dubai, UAE with an office soon to open in Brussels, Belgium. ke-na- emerged from a collective desire to reimagine and build alternative infrastructures with artists and cultural workers with its early origins in 2015 in Bangalore, India.

ke-na- operates primarily as a digital platform and institution governed in dialogue with an artist council, to experiment with institutional and programmatic typologies. The initiative reimagines how cultural institutions can function beyond built structures and national boundaries, developing new models for artistic collaboration, knowledge production, and community building. Through sustained research networks, fellowships, publications, professional development workshops, and artist editions, ke-na- creates pathways for artists and cultural workers to develop new work, nurture economic relations, and engage audiences in innovative ways.

ke-na-’s team: Rahul Gudipudi, Amber Sinha, Eva Ebersberger, Rayya Badran, Lorenza Herrasti, Charles Gohy, and Martin Heller.

ke-na-’s artist council and advisors: Azra Akšamija, Tarek Abou El Fatouh, Antonia Alampi, Nimmi Gowrinathan, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Nidhi Mahajan, Ibrahim Mahama, Francesco Manocorda, Christian Nyampeta, Marian Pastor-Roces, Andrea Torreblanca, Yesomi Umolu, Françoise Vergès, and Ilze Wolfe.