Beyond the artwork.
Chaitya Dhanvi ShahCurator & Managing Director, DRS Arts Company®
For us, supporting an artist has never meant financial assistance alone. At different moments, it has meant curatorial guidance without expectations attached, something we were doing long before the word curator became as widely used as it is today, which now feels almost like the fossil age of the art world.
It has meant conversations around an artwork, helping an artist look at their own practice differently, and access to knowledge, networks and resources that could help an idea develop further. There are stages when you are not supporting a résumé. You are backing something that has not yet had the chance to exist.
Capital, after all, is not always money.
A studio is capital. Knowledge is capital. An introduction, confidence, time, research, education, international exposure, documentation, a catalogue and visibility are all forms of capital. Sometimes belief itself becomes capital.
This is why our approach has always been 360-degree. We look beyond the artwork to the person who makes it, and beyond creation to what happens afterwards. An exceptional artwork still needs to be photographed, documented, written about, catalogued, published, exhibited, communicated and placed before the world. Supporting creation while ignoring the life behind it would be incomplete. Supporting creation while ignoring what happens after it leaves the studio would be equally incomplete.
For more than two decades, much of this support came through conversations, trust and relationships. One artist introduced another. A senior practitioner recommended someone younger. A teacher spoke about a student. A friend called, or somebody simply walked into the gallery. But every relationship-led ecosystem has a natural limitation: it mostly reaches people who are already connected to the circle. The DRS Arts Grant allows us to open that circle to artists we may never have met, and who may never have known how to approach us.
Technology should not replace human relationships. It should expand who gets access to them. We are not changing our philosophy. We are increasing its radius.