Hello Readers!

India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) is delighted to bring to you the latest news on our work between April and mid-July! Scroll for exciting updates on Project 560, Arts Research, Arts Practice, Arts Education and the newly introduced Archives and Museums programme. Click on our Point of View section for an engaging interview with graphic artist Sarbajit Sen, an Arts Practice grantee who worked on a graphic narrative on the mindscapes of people in West Bengal during rule of the Left Front.

We are excited to announce our very own arts festival Past Forward: Celebrating Critical Practices on October 30, 31 and November 1, 2019 in Bangalore. Please join us in celebrating groundbreaking projects from across the country and disciplines by over 60 grantees whose works were supported by IFA under the Arts Practice programme. Scroll down for more details!

Please visit our website or follow us on Twitter, facebook, and YouTube for regular updates!

We would love to hear from you—write to us at contactus@indiaifa.org with any feedback or query.

Warmly,
The IFA Team

The Project 560 programme at IFA is committed to a long-term, continuous engagement with the city through multipronged strategies. Our grantees organised a variety of events and activities in and around Bangalore city.

Interactions with workers in Bangalore

Ekta Mittal received a grant in 2018 to facilitate opportunities for labourers to engage with the arts and culture in the city. She organised several events in Bangalore which engaged many workers from the sex workers, powrakarmikas, domestic workers, garment workers unions and associations in the city in May, 2019. On International Workers’ Day, a silent demonstration with placards was organised at majestic bus stand. This event brought to light poor treatment of workers by the public in the city. Following this, a screening of films that highlight issues faced particularly by women workers was held at Maraa-a media and arts collective office. To help shift public perceptions of graveyard workers in the city, a solo performance titled Sudailamma by Prema Revati and directed by A Mangai was organised at Lingarajpuram and Koramangala slums, on May 11 and 12, 2019 respectively. Again, on May 26, 2019, A Variety Show and Launch of Bevaru Newspaper was organised at Samsa Auditorium. Variety Show was a presentation of multiple views, experiences and desires of the workers through performance, dance, song and talks. The Bevaru newspaper is an attempt to dedicate to highlight the workers’ perspective on the city. This bi-monthly newspaper is for workers and the general public and will be available in Kannada, Hindi and English. Read more about the newspaper in The Hindu!

The Launch of Bevaru, a bi-monthly newspaper by Ekta Mittal for workers and general public was held at Samsa Auditorium, Bangalore in May 2019

Aravani Arts Project at Balaji Bar and restaurant

Poornima Sukumar received a grant in 2018 for a year long series of curated artistic and cultural engagements in Bangalore that explore the city through the lives and perspectives of the transgender community, which has formed the Aravani Arts Project collective. On May 5, 2019, members of the collective re – painted Balaji Bar and restaurant in Bangalore, an old bar situated in Majestic where many people from the transgender community go to find work and for leisure.

Under Project 560, Request for Proposals (RFP) were circulated for 2019 under three categories–for Neighbourhood Engagements, Curated Artistic Engagements and Arts Projects (Research/Practice). We received ten applications under Neighbourhood Engagements. Twelve proposals have been received under Curated Artistic Engagements and eighteen proposals have been received under Arts Projects (Research /Practice). Grant awards will be announced following the recommendations of the evaluation panel that will meet by the end of August 2019. Stay tuned!

The Arts Research programme at IFA supports research into the histories and expressions of artistic practices in India. Under this programme, scholars, researchers and practitioners receive support for projects that investigate marginalised or relatively unexplored areas; create spaces for dialogue between theory and practice; offer new readings and frameworks for artistic practices; and use interdisciplinary approaches to break new conceptual ground. At IFA we encourage projects in Indian languages including English, in order to contribute towards discourse-building in multiple language contexts.

We are happy to report the overwhelming response to our Request for Proposals sent out in April 2019! We received 397 queries and more than 130 applications in multiple Indian languages. We will convene a panel of experts to review the shortlisted proposals, and then make the grants in November 2019. Stay tuned!

The Arts Research programme for the year 2019-2020 is supported by Titan Company Limited.

The Arts Practice programme supports critical practice in the arts and accepts proposals all year round. It encourages practitioners working across artistic disciplines to question existing notions through their practice.

IFA is not accepting any new queries or proposals under the Arts Practice programme. This is because we are organising an arts festival celebrating the works of our earlier grantees this year and have already expended our budget for projects under the programme. We will open invitations for queries and proposals again from December, 2019 for projects starting in or after April, 2020.

We are delighted to introduce you to our recent grantees and their projects:

Soumya Sankar Bose, a photographer received a grant to make a photo-book, artistically representing the massacre of Marichjhapi, 1979. The project aims to question the boundaries between documentary and staged photographs, while creating awareness about a historical event, the traces of which have been systematically erased. The outcome will be a book containing staged photographs, eyewitness portraits, archival materials and three essays.

Photograph from an ongoing project by Soumya Sankar Bose which artistically represents the 1979 massacre at Marichjhapi in West Bengal

Ish Shehrawat aka Ish S, a sound artist received a grant to create an audio installation, following research on Indian classical music and geometrical principles. Borrowing on Michael Foucault’s theory of Heterotopology, the project aims to challenge the listening practices of Indian classical music based on performance and improvisation, by spatialising recorded and composed sounds. The outcome will be two installations, one live performance and one final presentation on the installations and the research.

Ronidkumar Chingangbam aka Akhu, a lyricist and singer received a grant for dissemination of musical performances where the songs explore notions of Manipuri identity embedded in the lives, literature and folklore of the Meitei diaspora. As an extension to the earlier project supported by IFA that led to the creation of these songs and the performance, this one aims to take the music to six locations across Assam and Bangladesh in an attempt to reconnect with the places and the people whose stories the songs embody. The project also attempts to enliven traditional performance spaces, generate further conversations around Manipuri identity and thereby become a bridge between Manipur and its diaspora. The outcome will be final report, photos and videos of the performances and discussions.

KK Ramachandra Pulavar, a puppeteer received a grant to facilitate an intensive residential workshop over six days that will enable an exchange of knowledge and experiences between shadow puppeteers representing six traditional puppetry forms and contemporary projective shadow theatre practitioners. The artists will collaboratively explore contemporary approaches to conceptualising, devising and performing shadow puppetry through an in-depth inquiry into the narratives, aesthetics, techniques, and social contexts of puppetry. The outcome will be a final report, video documentation from the workshop and notes from the session on reflection and evaluation.

The Arts Education programme titled Kali Kalisu, (‘Learn and Teach’ in Kannada), focusses on integrating arts with the curriculum in government schools in Karnataka. It attempts to achieve this objective through grants made to artists and teachers; and facilitating training workshops for teachers and administrators. We are delighted to have made a grant to a school for integrating arts education policy:

The Malenadu Educational and Rural Development Society, in Narebailu, Uttara Kannada district, Karnataka received a grant for an engagement with students and staff of Chandana English Medium School run by them. This project, with Principal Investigator LV Hegde, will explore learning possibilities by integrating community knowledge and their art practices into classroom pedagogies. Under the guidance of one of the elders of the Halakki Vokkaliga community and custodians of their tradition – Sukri Bommanagowda, students will be encouraged to connect with and learn from the community through a series of activities like documenting, discussions, field trips, and interviews.

As a part of the project, a two-day orientation for teachers, students and community members was conducted at Chandana English Medium School from July 03 to 04, 2019. At the orientation, participants were briefed about the Kali Kalisu programme and community engagement projects by our ex-grantees.

Teachers' training programme in Dakshina Kannada

A three day teachers' training programme was conducted at Sneha School in Sullia taluk, Dakshina Kannada district from May 19 to 22, 2019. Thirty eight teachers from six taluks in Dakshina Kannada and two teachers from Mandya district were in attendance. This programme is aimed at sensitising participants to the many pedagogical possibilities in arts integrated education, with discussions on local literature and poetry, and workshops on theatre, music and craft. Such events are held through the year in various parts of Karnataka by faculty members and resource persons of arts and education—many of whom have been associated with IFA, facilitated by our Programme Officers for Arts Education, Krishnamurthy TN and Radhika Krishna Bharadwaj.

Teachers’ training programme held at Sneha School in Sullia taluk, Dakshina Kannada district in May 2019

Hejjegalu 2017-2018

We are also delighted to announce the latest version of Hejjegalu (Footsteps) 2017-2018, an annual publication reflecting on the significant impact and reach of the Kali Kalisu programme of India Foundation for the Arts (IFA). A noteworthy overview of this programme, featuring grantees and their projects, and the larger story of arts education in India, this publication will serve a vital resource and document for key persons and organisations in the field of Education in Karnataka – teachers, art educators, and policy makers. Browse through Hejjegalu and get a sense of Kali Kalisu projects, accompanied with rich illustrations!

This edition 2017-2018 was co-edited by teachers and IFA Arts Education grantees Nagaraj Hudeda and Chitra V, with Kaladhar S continuing as the designer, and has been supported by the Singhal Iyer Family Foundation (SIFF).

Cover page of the latest version of Hejjegalu (Footsteps) 2017-2018 with updates of Kali Kalisu projects, accompanied with rich illustrations!

National School Grants

We are delighted to announce that the Arts Education programme is expanding! This year we are inviting proposals from Government aided or non-profit schools across India for projects that seek to integrate the arts into classroom teaching and learning. To know more and apply, click here

The Arts Education programme for the year 2019-2020 is supported by Citi India.

From 2013 to 2018, IFA ran the Archival and Museum Fellowships initiative. During this period, our work between the years 2015 and 2018 was supported by Tata Trusts. The aim of these fellowships was to energise archives and museums as platforms for dialogue and discourse. It provided practitioners the opportunity to generate new, critical and creative approaches to public engagement with materials in museum and archival collections. These fellowships enabled the creation of multiple narratives and histories, based on resources that would be difficult to access otherwise. During these five years, 35 fellowships were made across seven archives and museums each. With the initiative having completed five years, as is the practice at IFA with each of our programmes, it was felt necessary to review the initiative and reimagine its future trajectory.

A conference titled Old Routes/New Journeys was organised in New Delhi in March 2018, in collaboration with Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi; and supported by Tata Trusts, Titan Company Limited and Ambedkar University, Delhi. This conference brought most of the IFA fellows, host institutions and outcomes together for the public and experts in the field. This was followed by a programme review by a panel of experts from the field – Rustom Bharucha, Joyoti Roy, Naman Ahuja and Shuddhabrata Sengupta. With the help of their recommendations, the newly articulated programme – the Archives and Museums programme (AMP) has been formulated.

The objective of the Archives and Museums programme, launched in April 2019 for a period of three years, is to continue to energise museums and archives as platforms for dialogue and discourse. Instead of fellowships, the programme will offer grants. The focus will be on both institutions and individuals to become co-producers of knowledge and expertise. The programme will select and work in collaboration with eight institutions – four archives and four museums.

The Archives and Museums programme (AMP) will offer three kinds of grants in association with the chosen institutions – Scholarly Grants, Creative Grants and Technical Grants.

Scholarly Grants: These grants will aim at creating content and supporting the knowledge bank of the institution, culminating into tangible outcomes such as books and catalogues. The grants will be for Rs 4 lakh each, and will cover both research and final outcomes.

Creative Grants: These grants will aim at supporting the creative outcomes of interpreting the collections through exhibitions, films, workshops or other public engagements. The grants will be for Rs 4 lakh each and will cover both research and final outcomes.

Technical Assistance Grants: An additional grant for technical assistance such as building inventories, digitisation, photography, online support, etc will be made in conjunction with the aforementioned Scholarly and Creative grants. This technical assistance will be awarded when it is deemed necessary and essential to the scholarly or creative outcomes. These grants would be made available to the institution or to the technical expert directly. The grants will be up to a maximum of Rs 3 lakh.

If you are interested in collaborating with us on this programme and would like to know more, please write to Suman Gopinath at suman@indiaifa.org and click here

Watch out for ‘Request for Proposals’ that will open in October 2019!

The IFA Archive is now online with materials from grants made in 2009-10, 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2012-13 available!

Explore a grant from the Archive with us!

Discover a grant made to Bangalore Artist Residency One (BAR1) in 2010 under our Extending Arts Practice programme. Four artists from diverse cultural backgrounds and regions were supported by IFA. They spent three months at the BAR1 studios in Bangalore, developing individual artworks and their work in progress was exhibited at the end of the residency.

The IFA Archive is built with support from the Lohia Foundation.

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We organise grant showcases that take the form of presentations, performances, panel discussions, film screenings and more, for multiple audiences across the country. These grant showcases help create dialogue and in turn, become exciting spaces of discovery and discussion. Our staff also participated in various seminars to talk about our programmes, projects and the vision of grantmaking and arts philanthropy. Below is an account of these activities over the last few months:

Rediscovering heritage through technology in Goa

Convergence: Rediscovering Heritage through Technology, an outreach initiative exploring the Goa Chitra Museum collection by Fellows Lina Vincent and Aparajita Bhasin, along with Krishnan Ghosh, took place on May 13, 2019 at 6 Assagao in Goa. They highlighted the techniques and philosophies of why and how human beings design and build objects, and how changing technologies have altered our everyday experiences. They also discussed the possibilities of advanced human technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Augmented reality aiding in knowledge and heritage preservation and documentation, not only creating a whole new realm of audience engagement with museums but also developing frameworks for learning from the past.

Lina Vincent and Aparajita Bhasin received an Archival and Museum Fellowship, from India Foundation for the Arts, in collaboration with the Goa Chitra Museum, made possible with support from Tata Trusts.

Exhibition of rare photographs in Cochin

Portraits of Invasion, an exhibition of rare photographs from the colonial era in the High Ranges of Kerala on June 09, 2019 was organised at Durbar Hall Art Gallery in Cochin. Curated by KP Jayakumar, this exhibition was inaugurated by eminent artist and writer Bony Thomas. The exhibition highlights the ways in which photographic representations formed the bedrock for anthropological studies in the late 19th and early 20th century British India and portrayed the indigenous communities as 'uncivilised' to establish the European cultural supremacy. Read more about the exhibition in The New Indian Express.

KP Jayakumar received a grant under the Arts Research programme, made possible with support from Titan Company Limited.

Portraits of Invasion, an exhibition of rare photographs from the colonial era in the High Ranges of Kerala by KP Jayakumar held at Durbar Hall Art Gallery, Cochin in June 2019

Exhibition and panel discussion on Calcutta in Kolkata

The City in the Archive – Part II, an exhibition of two projects curated by Diksha Dhar and Nilina Deb Lal was organised on June, 27, 2019 at Jadunath Bhavan Museum and Resource Centre (JBMRC) in Kolkata. The Lives of Labour in the City curated by Diksha Dhar explores the various ways in which ‘labour’ has been represented within the spectrum of urban visual cultures of Calcutta. The exhibition focus in particular was on a non-commercial documentary photography project by a media organisation called Chitrabani of the 1970s and 80s, which dedicated itself to profiling the diverse trades, occupations and labours of Calcutta’s streets, undertaken at a time when the state of the urban poor in the city was gathering critical attention globally. Rewriting the City: Early Interventions of the Calcutta Improvement Trust curated by Nilina Deb Lal presented an overview of the programme of works initiated by the Calcutta Improvement Trust (CIT) in the first couple of decades of its existence.

Diksha Dhar and Nilina Deb Lal received fellowships under the Archival and Museum Fellowships, from India Foundation for the Arts, in collaboration with Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC) made possible with support from Tata Trusts.

The Lives of Labour in the City, an exhibition curated by Diksha Dhar held at Jadunath Bhavan Museum and Resource Centre (JBMRC), Kolkata in June 2019

Curated musical experiences in Ahmedabad

Tradition and the Individual: A curated listening experience of personalities in the Agra Gharana by Smit Dharia and A Hindustani Classical vocal recital of ragas from the Jaipur Atrauli Gharana and Webpage Launch of ragas of the Jaipur Atrauli Gharana by Radhika Joshi Ray on June 27 and June 28 was organised at the Saptak Archives, Ahmedabad. The curated listening session led by Smit Dharia gave listeners a chance to experience recordings specially selected from the vast collection of Saptak Archives of artists inspired by the Agra tradition not only in performance, but also from informal baithaks and discussions. Accompanied by Shri Tejovrush Joshi on tabla and Shri Rohit Marathe on the harmonium, Radhika Joshi Ray performed three ragas characteristic to the Jaipur Atrauli Gharana at the Hindustani vocal recital. This event was followed by the launch of a webpage of ragas of the Jaipur Atrauli Gharana. This event was inaugurated by Dr Arun Dravid (senior vocalist of the Jaipur Atrauli Gharana). To access the webpage, click here!

Smit Dharia and Radhika Joshi Ray received fellowships under the Archival and Museum Fellowships, from India Foundation for the Arts, in collaboration with Saptak Archives, Ahmedabad made possible with support from Tata Trusts.

Smit Dharia engaging listeners with select recordings from the vast collection of Saptak Archives at Tradition and the Individual: A curated listening experience of personalities in the Agra Gharana held at Saptak Archives, Ahmedabad in June 2019

Curated permanent collection in Barpeta

Barpeta in Retrospect, an exhibition of a curated permanent collection on July 07, 2019 was organised at Barpeta District Museum in Barpeta. The Barpeta District Museum established in 1987 houses more than 450 artefacts including a number of objects from the satras. This exhibition curated by Dhiraj Neog builds a narrative and provides a context that strings together the different kinds of objects in the collection.

Dhiraj Neog received a fellowship under the Archival and Museum Fellowships from India Foundation for the Arts, in collaboration with Barpeta District Museum, made possible with support from Tata Trusts.

Objects on display at Barpeta District Museum, Assam

Members of our staff travelled to many places to participate in discussions on arts and philanthropy.

Menaka Rodriguez, Head, Resource Mobilisation and Outreach was invited as a panellist on Planning 365: Cultural Professionals look at 2019, organised by Arts and Culture Resources India and Integrated Penguin on April 24, 2019 at The Courtyard, Bangalore. A peer sharing session with culture professionals as they plan for the year, Menaka shared the session with Nikhil Barua, Nimi Ravindran and Amitabh Kumar.

Menaka Rodriguez, Head, Resource Mobilisation and Outreach participated in ‘Planning 365: Cultural Professionals look at 2019’, organised by Arts and Culture held at The Courtyard, Bangalore in April 2019

ARTS SERVICES
The Arts Services initiative at India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) enables corporates and organisations to support specific arts projects and experiences that we see value in, and which are close to their hearts. This initiative is not part of our grant programmes, but arises out of our impulse to connect supporters with artists in collaborative projects. It also enables us to raise more resources for our grantmaking.

CATALYST
Catalyst—Arts, An Inspiration for Excellence is an initiative that continues to bring to corporate houses, a wide range of accomplished artists from the worlds of theatre, literature, visual and performing arts, to share their creative journeys and pursuit of excellence in a year-long engagement. These artists include Raghu Rai, Malavika Sarukkai, Aditi Mangaldas, BN Goswamy, Ratna Pathak Shah, Sanjna Kapoor, Romi Khosla, Arundhati Nag, Jitish Kallat, Atul Dodiya, Rahul Ram, Varun Grover, Benjamin Gilani, Astad Deboo, Anju Dodiya, Reena Kallat and Lillete Dubey. Catalyst also includes a version that can be customised to offer arts workshops along with talks.

We organised a session for Titan Company Limited, with Rahul Ram and Arundhati Nag where they shared stories from their journey in the arts at The Hotel Oterra in Electronics City, Bangalore on May 09, 2019. This was part of Titan’s Rendezvous with Excellence - A series of conversations on excellence and the pursuit of it for their senior management team.

For more details on Catalyst or if you would like to bring this programme to your company, please write to Joyce Gonsalves at joyce@indiaifa.org

We will be happy to work with you on diverse Arts Services, which include the conceptualisation, design and management of arts courses, talks, and workshops and for different audiences. For more details on the Arts Services provided by IFA please write to menaka@indiaifa.org

SMART (Strategic Management in the Art of Theatre)
SMART, a series of three-day workshop modules to be conducted across India seeks to sharpen the thinking and working processes of theatre groups. It poses questions and possibilities that will push groups to optimise their strengths, overcome constraints and make a significant and positive impact on the internal functioning of the group as well as impact the local theatre ecology.

After Pune and Bangalore, the third in the series of the three-day SMART workshops was conducted, in association with local partner Anurag Kala Kendra, at Hotel Millennium Hotel in Bikaner, Rajasthan from June 28 to 30, 2019. It was facilitated by SMART team members, Menaka Rodriguez, Head of Resource Mobilisation and Outreach at IFA; Sudhanva Deshpande of Jana Natya Manch and Studio Safdar, Delhi; and Ashish Mehta of Aasakta Kalamanch, Pune. It was attended by 18 participants across 11 theatre groups, from various cities including Bikaner, Bhilwara, Delhi, Jaipur, Kota, Mumbai and Pune! The workshop covered sessions on Core Values, Group Sustainability, Audience Building, Communication and Resource Mobilisation.

THE SMART team with participants at the three-day SMART workshop held at Hotel Millennium in Bikaner, Rajasthan in June 2019

UPCOMING EVENTS
For exciting upcoming events featuring grant showcases across the country, stay tuned! We look forward to seeing you at the following event – do spread the word!

Please join us at Past Forward: Celebrating Critical Practices, an arts festival over 3 days bringing together over 60 diverse artistic projects asking questions of our pasts, investigating the present, and imagining possible collective futures, through panel discussions, performances, film screenings, workshops and exhibitions on October 30, 31 and November 01, 2019 at Bangalore International Centre, Bangalore.

For more details on these events, do sign up for our emails here, follow us on facebook or Twitter for regular updates, or simply tune into our website at www.indiaifa.org/events

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Arts Education: National School Grants
IFA invites proposals for Arts Education from Government aided or non-profit schools across India for projects that seek to integrate the arts into classroom teaching and learning. These projects could address one or more of the following objectives:

Connect local art forms and cultural practices with classroom learning and teaching
Integrate arts processes into learning and teaching of all subjects
Include lived experiences of the students to classroom learning
Work with local artists and resources from the community

To know more and apply, click here

Arts Practice
IFA is not accepting any new queries or proposals under the Arts Practice programme now. This is because we are organising an arts festival celebrating the works of our earlier grantees this year and have already expended our budget for projects under the programme. We will open invitations for queries and proposals again from December, 2019 for projects starting in or after April, 2020.

Experience the Joy of Exploration. Become a Friend of IFA with an Annual Donation of Rs 5,000/- upwards!

Become a Friend of IFA and set out on an exciting journey with IFA with an Annual Donation of Rs 5,000/- through the many worlds of the arts and culture! As a Friend of IFA, you along with 400+ Friends of IFA, will experience the arts and culture through specially- curated events, engage in discussions and debates, and enjoy exclusive sessions on the arts and culture! Connect with artists, musicians, dancers, actors, researchers, filmmakers, performers, educators, archivists and fellow art enthusiasts!

As a Friend of IFA, your passionate support will bring to life projects that examine our pasts, enable us to make collective sense of our present, and dream of shared and vibrant futures, together. Your contribution will help projects reach diverse publics—as books, films, performances, educational materials, exhibitions and more!

IFA has been able to facilitate close to 600 arts projects, disbursing Rs 25 crore over two decades across India—because of you. Every donation you make helps us extend support to the field.

To learn more write to menaka@indiaifa.org

To make your contribution online, click here (please do not use special characters ~,!,@,#,$,%,^,&,*,(,),., while filling the form)

To make your contribution by cheque, click here

We look forward to your support.

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Goodies

Set of Six Coasters
Have you picked up your set of six coasters, featuring eye-catching details from select IFA projects over the years? Glimpse at the work that we support during a brief respite as you enjoy your cuppa and go through 2019! From a multimedia artwork tracing the introduction of books to women in India, a graphic narrative documenting the stories of migrant labourers in New Delhi, a film essaying the life and works of artist K Ramanujam, an installation of ceramics exploring aesthetics, a dry plate collodion photography project capturing changes in two villages to an installation in a historic building in Bangalore.

Get your set soon for Rs 550/- (inclusive of domestic courier charges) online or write to us at contactus@indiaifa.org and support our work. Your purchase will go back towards grantmaking.

Have you picked up your set of six coasters, featuring eye-catching details from select IFA projects?

Publications

Painters, Poets, Performers: The Patuas of Bengal
Painters, Poets, Performers: The Patuas of Bengal by Ritu Sethi yet is a visually rich and informative book on the history and evolution of Patachitra—literally, 'painting on cloth'; it provides an outline of this narrative tradition of pictorial storytelling and its multi-talented, polymath makers in Bengal and Odisha.
Please click here to order your copy for Rs 500/- (exclusive of courier charges) now!

This book is supported by Infosys Foundation.

Embroidering Futures: Repurposing the Kantha
In 2012, we published Embroidering Futures: The Repurposing of Kantha, edited by Ritu Sethi. This book traces this journey of kantha from its origins to its current avatar, through the tales and recollections of collectors, inheritors, designers and producers of this unique piece of embroidered cloth. The publication is now available to read online. Click here to read the PDF for free!

This book was supported by Infosys Foundation.

ArtConnect
ArtConnect, a magazine on the arts and culture, is now available to read for free online.

Between 2008 and 2013, IFA published 13 issues of ArtConnect featuring lively, compelling writing and artwork across a host of disciplines and genres, from female impersonators in Company Theatre in Kannada; Marathi Little Magazines; violence in Kannada cinema; gender and the Indian documentary; to the visual culture of early Urdu magazines! Please note that while each issue is priced at Rs 100/-, Volume 7 is Rs 150/- You can avail of special anniversary discounts on Limited Edition collections. All the proceeds from the sale of publications go back into grantmaking!

To know more, write to contactus@indiaifa.org

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IFA: Can you give us a broad impression of your childhood – some of the landscapes (emotional and physical and also of the “middleclass”) that you may remember vividly that seep into Ramblings? What do you think has been the aftermath of that period that has also crept into your work/consciousness?

Sarbajit Sen: It may sound odd. But I don’t romanticise my childhood much as the most blissful chapter in my life. True, some magical and sweet moments flash at times – like sudden shafts of light. Otherwise it was a drab continuum. In retrospect I can look at my childhood as a broad collage where a strange array of varied gestures, tones and infinite vagaries of living faces lies intertwined.

The eventless small town of Birati where I grew up is the cradle of my story. The dramatis personae – all victims of Partition – were from bleak squatters’ colonies. They crowd my pages with their many accounts – of love and treachery, meanness and goodness, hope and despair. Birati in my childhood days hangs out of time. Yet it is connected somehow with the many upheavals of the world outside. Here the physical seeps into the emotional. The inner landscape emerges as a vital character.

My only disclaimer for Ramblings is that nothing is fictitious here. Many of the faces – now worn out in time – still exist. Though in a different Birati.

I grew up hearing stories of Radcliffe and riots from my grandparents. Their faces betrayed vestiges of loss and displacement. Life in the refugee colonies was a constant story of harsh and crude struggle for a decent living. The stray stories narrated here are essentially no-stories. But, stitched together, they unfold an intricate trajectory of the Bengali middleclass mindset through some important social political junctures.

All these experiences have shaped my ways of seeing things. What has most strongly crept into my consciousness since childhood is the concept of displacement. From painful memories of personal scars – to a relentless humiliation of the common people in face of the present paradigm of development – displacement attains a non-personal dimension for me. Often my stories try to address it.

Ramblings, a graphic novel by Sarbajit Sen explores the tumultuous history of the Left Front rule in West Bengal and its eventual collapse in 2011

IFA: Do give us an overview of some of the cultural influences over the decades on your work and thinking. What are your thoughts on how the time period in Ramblings has been documented across some of the arts, in literature, music, cinema and in the news?

Sarbajit Sen: My father and his friends – mostly left liberal literary activists or artists – highly influenced me in my childhood. Their animated sessions – in our house or at the College Street Coffee House – spun around names such as the poets Subhash Mukhopadhyay and Mangalacharan Chattopadhyay; writer Somen Chanda; filmmakers Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen and the IPTA (Indian People’s Theatre Association).

In the same breath they also talked about cultural and literary greats such as Maxim Gorky and Vladimir Mayakovsky, Julius Fučík, Langston Hughes, Albert Maltz, Mahmoud Darwish, Pablo Neruda and African poets such as Birago Diop, David Diop, Léopold Sédar Senghor and so on. Russian publications, which took up much of the space on our bookshelves, were forever an alluring el dorado. Their illustrations transported me to a different world and highly enriched my visual orientation.

Stepping out to the city to join a college in the mid-70s exposed me to a different world of poetry and protest, dreams and doubts. The roads widened.

West Bengal had already witnessed the Naxalbari movement. The writings of The Hungryalists had already stirred the mid-60s. Shakti Chattopadhyay, Malay Roy Choudhury, Samir Roychoudhury or Allen Ginsberg emerged as significant names. In the same vein, Krittibas – a Bengali poetry magazine became a fascinating powerhouse for our generation.

The Naxalbari movement had given birth to a new imagination. Writings of Saroj Datta, Samar Sen, Srijan Sen, Biren (Virendranath) Chattopadhyay, Mahasweta Devi, Nabarun Bhattacharya, Raghab Bandyopadhyay and many others were a permanent inspiration.

Yet another major inspiration was the group theatre movement. The relevance of Ajitesh Bandopadhyay, Sombhu Mitra, Tripti Mitra, Utpal Dutt, Rudraprasad Sengupta, Arun Mukherjee, Badal Sarkar and many other theatre activists was strongly valid throughout the 80s and 90s when popular support for the Left Front was on the wane for many reasons. A rich, organic history of protest was being summarised under a theory of patron-client relationships, of vote banks and faction leaders. The vacuum was setting in. Many chapters of Ramblings attempt to capture this said vacuum.

World cinema and the French New Wave with its radical experimentation with narrative as well as engagement with the sociopolitical upheavals of the time helped us question the very construct of a ‘story’.

Ramblings, a graphic novel by Sarbajit Sen explores the tumultuous history of the Left Front rule in West Bengal and its eventual collapse in 2011

IFA: Tell us a bit about your style in Ramblings and what you seek to convey through moods and emotions of people and land?

Sarbajit Sen: If it is about the style of storytelling then the cue may be taken from the last statement given above. My ‘story’ is based on no-story first of all. So there is no pre-ordained pattern of a pyramidal progression. Ramblings is not a larger than life kind of story. I am also inspired by Will Eisner’s style of storytelling (City People Notebook, Invisible People and so on). I would rather love to stitch together some loose narratives in an apparently stray, zigzag course. Almost like a Jim Jarmusch script.

About my style of drawing I would like to elaborate. The style changes according to the different moods of the chapters. I generally prefer swift, quirky brushstrokes. But – if and when needed – my drawings can be quasi-realistic. Distortion or exaggeration comes only when inevitably required. It all depends on the story. Precisely, I don’t like to confine myself too much to one particular style in this particular narrative. Edmond Baudoin’s graphic novel Dalí is a huge inspiration in this regard.

The few opening pages of a certain chapter titled “The Walk” in Ramblings depict a dream-walk in an absurdly unmanned suburb enveloped in a visible darkness. This is a symbolical depiction of the hollow despair that grabbed a huge populace after the fall of the Left Front government. My long walk in search of the possible core of a crumbling middleclass psyche starts from here. This kind of backdrop calls for a different lens other than a normal one. Black was much needed to accentuate the grim mood. I deliberately opted for the linocut look as a tribute to Chittaprosad Bhattacharya and Käthe Kollwitz – and also to the pioneers of the world of woodcut Graphic Novels – Lynd Ward and Frans Masereel.

A particular chapter titled “Night of the Fireflies” is about the bloody political violence of the early 70s. It depicts an act of annihilation on a particular night. I decided to work in mixed media on grainy handmade papers to give some particular frames a smudgy look. The chapters depicting the Emergency and the Bangladesh liberation war have been treated with the same appearance.

Ramblings, a graphic novel by Sarbajit Sen explores the tumultuous history of the Left Front rule in West Bengal and its eventual collapse in 2011

IFA: What are your impressions of official history narratives that aim to present a linear, coherent one? Can you give us an example of how you have moved away and also, articulated this in your work? Could you also tell us about working on memory and the challenges of this project?

Sarbajit Sen: We often tend to understand history in a conventional sense as some occurrence of events. ‘History’ for that matter is not a definitive monolithic structure – a sanctum sanctorum. History is what we make of it. It’s all about understanding “the world behind the text”. My narrative seeks to read the multiple layers of a specific stretch of time and the behaviour of a set of characters – myself included. It’s not my gaze alone. I know about my looking glass through which I look, and the ‘limit’ and frame that I intend to take. I may love to imagine the experience of the observed subject. But how can I ignore the experience of the subject observing me? Our different gazes are bound to cross each other.

Ramblings is structured like fiction. I do not mean to say, however, that truth is therefore absent. It seems that the possibility exists for fiction to function in truth. One often ‘fictions’ history on the basis of a political reality that makes it true.

I am not a political analyst. So I am unable to write a coherent “history” of the Left movement in West Bengal. Moreover Ramblings is not a straightforward “historical” account. In the first place, it is not linear in structure – neither in chronological sequence, nor in the unfolding of a single series of ideas. It is based on the premise that the social processes one tries to understand must be approached through their intertextuality. The history of a society should become an articulation of many histories.

The background here is built on memories and lived experiences over a huge span of time that went through significant junctures. Each and every bit of a memory or experience may be a pointer to a different reading of the same stretch of time. There have been a lot of shifts in our “familiar” paradigms over the past three decades after all.

From romanticising socialism a la the USSR model to an addiction for power at the cost of compromises and resultantly losing the connects and – later – subverting popular support through a coercive and corrupt clientelism and procreating generations of a complacent middleclass gentry as a corpulent, though corrosive, humongous body of sheer vote bank – it has really been a weary walk for the Left Front in Bengal over a stretch of more than three decades.

Digging out remote and not too remote memories that illustrate or interpret such transitions and fitting them in accordance in the narrative is an exciting game for me.

Ramblings, a graphic novel by Sarbajit Sen explores the tumultuous history of the Left Front rule in West Bengal and its eventual collapse in 2011

Sarbajit Sen received an Arts Practice grant from India Foundation of the Arts, made possible with support from Technicolor India Private Limited.

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