How dark it is before dawn
Take a seat and watch the horizon, pick up a blank page from locations around the city and Brighton Dome, 3-26 May. Or participate in artist-led workshops to join Doyel and Neil in drawing your own New Dawn.
Taking place across the Festival you can also join us in drawing your own New Dawn. This will culminate in an immersive participatory art installation at The Old Courtroom.
Take a seat and watch the horizon from one of our red chairs popping up around the city.
Artists Doyel Joshi and Neil Ghose Balser of Howareyoufeeling.studio were invited by Anoushka Shankar to create the Brighton Festival 2025 brochure cover and art installation, reflecting on the meaning of a New Dawn. They were inspired to capture the power and potential in the darkness before the dawn and the breaking of a new day.
The duo conducted a series of workshops with people of all ages and backgrounds drawing their version of a New Dawn, resulting in the series of images you see on our brochure covers this year. You will find more of these drawings appearing across the city throughout May. As more and more drawings from around the world come together, we celebrate this movement and symbol of bringing individual light together to become part of a collective strength.
About Doyel Joshi (b. 1991) / Neil Ghose Balser (b. 1991)
Doyel Joshi and Neil Ghose Balser are a Mumbai based artist duo. They run @Howareyoufeeling.studio, a multidisciplinary art space and studio founded with an approach to investigate emotion in relation to a subject. They create extensions of these in large scale installations, performance and interventions. Their work is rooted both in personal heritage and traditions whilst questioning the ideas around provenance.
Working on new formats of public engagement and challenging contemporary practices, the studio works in an experimental format and attempts to expand the scope of what art can do outside of traditional gallery spaces.
Their work in their own wedding in Rajasthan with tradition meeting contemporary and future motifs in installations was picked up by VOGUE India and covered in a large feature in their December issue. Since then they have had commissions including India Art Fair (2024), Hermes, Gucci, Architectural Digest, Sa Ladakh Art Festival (2024), German Embassy Delhi, Contemporary Museum Palma Mallorca (2024), Volkswagen, Lovebirds, Mugler, Herstory, Mercedes, Nowness, Vogue i.a.
Both hold a B.F.A from Parsons, The New School / New York in Fashion Design, Sculpture (Doyel) and Performance and Sound Design (Neil).
