Villa Swagatam at the heart of “The New Cultural Passeurs”
On the occasion of the official visit to India of the President of the French Republic, H.E. Mr Emmanuel Macron, the French Institute in India hosted a special cultural evening entitled The New Cultural Passeurs. Conceived as an immersive walk-through and organised in collaboration with Serendipity Arts, the sequence placed Villa Swagatam at the very heart of a living, breathing constellation of artists, writers and thinkers shaping the Indo-French dialogue of today.
Throughout history, certain individuals have carried cultures across frontiers. They are not simply travellers or creators; they are passeurs. They allow themselves to be inhabited by another land : its language, its light, its traditions, and in turn transform and transmit what they have absorbed. Passeurs do not merely cross borders; they build cultural bridges. They create landscapes where different worlds can recognise one another, placing culture at the root of international dialogue.
With programmes such as Villa Swagatam, the French Institute in India cultivates precisely this community of Passeurs. Writers, designers, and artists enter into dialogue with Indian institutions, workshops and communities. Their encounters are not fleeting: they leave traces in works produced, collaborations forged, and vocabularies of creation shared. As part of the India-France Year of Innovation 2026, this evening celebrated innovation not only as technology or industry, but as a creative driver, which keeps on reinventing tradition.
The Gallery of Passeurs
The immersive sequence brought together works created during Villa Swagatam residencies across India, a fabric of correspondences between design, literature, craft and visual storytelling.
Exhibited were the collectible design pieces developed by Marie Gastini during her residency at Æquõ Gallery in Mumbai, which were also exhibited earlier at the India Art Fair in 2026. These were accompanied by the works of Marisol Santana, former resident at Nila House. A section on the different literary perspectives on the city of Varanasi showcased the works of graphic novelist Clément Xavier and poet Monia Aljalis, both former residents at the Alice Boner Institute.
The evening also featured the work of Saba Niknam, in residence at Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust, whose film Goddesses of Faridabad offered a poetic meditation on women’s labour, resilience and quiet forms of grace observed in a street market in Faridabad.
Craft in Conversation: Gabriel Hafner
A highlight of the evening was the interaction between the President and designer Gabriel Hafner, currently in residence at Jaipur Rugs, Hafner’s practice unfolds at the crossroads of art and design. Immersed in the weaving communities of Rajasthan, he draws on ornamental languages and technical gestures to transform his approach to industrial and product design. Hafner displayed to the President one of the rugs that he was working on in collaboration with the master artisans in Jaipur, walking him through his process. He took on as a creative challenge to reinterpret existing rugs of the company and to create small repetitive embroidery patterns on top of it, giving a second life to this material, a brilliant transition into a contemporary vocabulary. Innovation is not only about inventing from scratch but thinking about the reuse of materials.
Poetry Without Borders: Meena Kandasamy & Selim-a Atallah
The President also engaged in an intimate conversation with two Villa Swagatam laureates: Indian poet and novelist Meena Kandasamy and Tunisian poet and performer Selim-a Atallah.
Fresh from a month-long residency at the Maison de la Poésie de Nantes, Meena Kandasamy reflected the vibrant circulation of ideas between India and France, and read out a poem from her latest poetry collection “Tomorrow Someone Will Arrest You” (Juggernaut Books, 2025”). Selim-a Atallah Chettoui, concluding a residency at the Lakmahal Library in Colombo, shared how her time in Sri Lanka influenced her creative process and read out an extract from her poetry collection “Au Pieu” (La Contre Allée, 2025).
This sequence highlighted the structuring role of literary residencies in enabling translation, transmission and lasting intellectual exchange.
A Celebration of a Growing Community
The New Cultural Passeurs was more than an event; it was a living demonstration of what Villa Swagatam makes possible. The evening also marked an important milestone: three years of the programme and a community now of almost one hundred passeurs strong. One hundred individual journeys, one hundred immersions, one hundred dialogues woven between France and South Asia, and a momentum that continues to grow.
