Festival Director Kris Nelson leads eight-person Australian arts delegation to Chennai, Bengaluru and Mumbai, strengthening Sydney Festival’s cultural relationships across the Asia Pacific.

Sydney Festival will deepen its engagement with India this September through Detours ∞ Reroutes, a new cultural exchange bringing eight leading Australian and international curators and programmers to the South Indian cosmopolitan cities of Chennai, Bengaluru and Mumbai.

Led by Sydney Festival Festival Director Kris Nelson and Artistic Associate Nithya Nagarajan, Detours ∞ Reroutes reflects the Festival’s growing commitment to sustained artistic relationships across the Asia Pacific and to positioning Sydney as a meeting point for artists, ideas and audiences from the Indo Pacific and serving our growing diasporas.

The delegation will spend time with artists, cultural leaders and institutions across the three cities, encountering contemporary, classical and folk practices through performances, studio visits, pitch sessions, networking conversations and shared dialogue.

The visit forms part of a wider ambition for Kris to ensure one of Australia’s major international festivals is actively connected to the cultural conversations shaping its region.

“Sydney is a profoundly international city, and its festival should be equally curious about the world around it,” said Kris Nelson, Festival Director, Sydney Festival. “India has extraordinary artistic ecologies that cannot be understood through a single visit, city or art form. This delegation is about listening first, building relationships and creating the conditions for meaningful encounter and exchange that deepens over time.”

Detours ∞ Reroutes is conceived by Sydney Festival Artistic Associate Nithya Nagarajan, whose curatorial practice has focused extensively on contemporary performance and transnational exchange across Australia and the Asia Pacific.

“Australia–India cultural exchange can too easily be framed around export, touring or market opportunity,” Nagarajan said. “We wanted to begin somewhere else: with curiosity, context and relationships. Chennai, Bengaluru and Mumbai each offer radically different ways of thinking about artistic practice, tradition, experimentation and the role of the arts in public life. At a personal level, it is also about connecting both my homes.”

Conflictorium. Part of our 2026 Sydney Festival summer school program. 

The Delegation 

Kris Nelson, Festival Director, Sydney Festival, Australia’s major international summer arts festival and a leading platform for contemporary Australian and international work.

Nithya Nagarajan, Artistic Associate, Sydney Festival and lead of Detours ∞ Reroutes, an artist and curator working across experimental practice, artist development and Asia-Pacific exchange.

Brad Spolding, Head of Performing Arts Programming, Bunjil Place, Melbourne, and curator working across contemporary and experimental performance, interdisciplinary practice and moving image.

Sid Sharma, Independent musician, DJ, party organiser and Founder, KERFEW.

Paschal Daantos Berry, Associate Producer, Diversity Arts Australia, and a curator, writer, performance maker and dramaturg whose career has included leadership roles with Blacktown Arts, the Biennale of Sydney and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Georgia Hayward, Curator, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA), and Mardigan/Maranganji artist and writer working across contemporary visual art and experimental practice.

Talia Smith, Coordinator Programming, Blacktown Arts, and an Aotearoa-born artist and curator whose practice spans contemporary visual art, photography and Pasifika and First Nations perspectives.

Pelin Başaran, Creative Director, Battersea Arts Centre, London, an internationally recognised curator and programmer of contemporary performance with a strong focus on artistic freedom and global exchange.

Together, the delegation represents a cross-section of Australia’s festival, performing arts and contemporary visual arts ecology, bringing perspectives from Sydney, Western Sydney, Melbourne and Perth into conversation with Indian peers.

Detours ∞ Reroutes is led by Sydney Festival in partnership with Bangalore-based boutque agency ALIF and supported through Creative Australia.

Raf Saperra, 2026.