FERAL OUTDOOR ARTS RESIDENCY WITH CLYDE MUISHIEL REGIONAL PARK & RIG ARTS - HAMSHYA RAJKUMAR
Background
This project is supported through a programme of work delivered by Feral and funded by Creative Scotland. Supported by Clyde Muirshiel Regional Park & RIG Arts. Feral’s outdoor arts residency programme is aimed at Scotland based artists interested in developing outdoor or site-specific performance projects responding to landscape.
2026 Recipient- HAMSHYA RAJKUMAR
During their residency, Hamshya will explore how conservation practices can be a ritual, performative, spectacle and vice versa. For example, like a small live eco-social choreography or live site-specific ritual that behaves as conservation. Can live art or spectacle can serve Nature and the humans who ‘use’ the site? Learning from the Clyde Muirshiel Regional Park Rangers and spending intensive time on site, Hamshya intends to discover whether there are habitats and/or species that would benefit from human disturbance or care.
Overall, Hamshya hopes to investigate the makings of a deeply site-specific work that is embedded ecologically and participates within a multispecies community.
ABOUT HAMSHYA RAJKUMAR
Hamshya is an interdisciplinary artist working across performance, sculpture, ecology and seed.
By situating the body outside the constraints of binary structures, they explore our human place in a world where ‘Nature’ is separate, dominated and objectified. Combining a site-specific movement and visual arts practice; currently they focus on highly ‘disturbed’ places: ranging from post-industrial landscapes to gardens. For the past 5 years, Hamshya has been exploring the former industrial steelworks Ravenscraig site in Scotland.
Hamshya also works as a Seed Librarian at the Glasgow Seed Library working with wild and cultivated seed. As a member of Hewin, Rizzle & Baise, their multi-species design was longlisted for the Davidson Prize in 2024. In addition, with the tine collective, they recently exhibited in ‘A Fragile Correspondence’ at the Scotland + Venice Architecture Biennale in 2023 and the Dundee V&A in 2024-2025.