For exploring the contours of feminist street theatre as a genre, with its specificities and aims, its own language and methods, aesthetics and conceptual underpinnings as an integral part of the Indian women’s movement during the 1980s in Delhi. The outcomes will include a book and a CD.
For the design and editing of a monograph on Bengali artist Jamini Roy with images from some of his finest paintings. This builds on an earlier grant to inventory Indian modernist paintings and prints from the late eighteenth to the late twentieth century housed in the collection of Rajya Charukala Parishad, Kolkata.
For three curatorial residencies, an art writing workshop and an international seminar addressing critical issues of curating Indian art in a global context. These projects will facilitate the development of a model for practice-based curatorial training and encourage cross-cultural dialogue on curating practices.
For mapping exhibition policy in India during the twentieth century; documenting select curatorial experiences over the last decade; and analysing the evolving relationship between curatorial practice and public culture. The research processes and outcomes will be captured in an illustrated report. This will be followed by meetings between representatives of museums, art institutions and relevant government ministries, and independent curators, artists and critics towards the preparation and distribution of advocacy materials and a policy-oriented document.
For research at the Munshi Aziz Bhat Museum of Central Asian & Kargil Trade Artifacts in Kargil. It will culminate in an exhibition that will open in the Museum in September, 2014. The exhibition will re-present and contextualize the large collection of historical and ethnographic objects in the museum by constructing narratives around these objects, texts and legacies of the people who have traversed these regions.
For a 15-day puppetry workshop for nine participants from diverse artistic backgrounds with a traditional master Togalu Gombeyata practitioner. First among a series to be held over the next two years, the workshop expects to kickstart the process of building a robust discourse and pedagogy for puppetry in India through intensive training, discussions and artistic exchanges between traditional and contemporary puppeteers and other arts practitioners who draw from puppetry in form, content or aesthetics.
For an experimental HD video film on the Mars One project that aims to set up the first human settlement in Mars. Referencing the works of Jules Verne and Franklin Story Musgrave, the video will include scientific reports, plans, charts, confessional videos, personal journals, popular cinema clips and clips of varying audio frequencies interspersed with interviews with future astronauts. The artists also plan to create an exhibition and performance from the material created and gathered for the video.
For research towards a stylised documentary on Hindi pulp fiction that reflects the struggles of the writers and publishers as producers of ‘low art’. It will trace the journey of the writer through the system that enables the publishing and distribution of pulp fiction, thereby illustrating the ethos of the world that produces such material. This project is co-funded by Recyclewala Films Pvt. Ltd, Mumbai.
For the study and documentation of landmark art exhibitions in India from 1947 to the present. It will include those exhibitions that were planned but did not materialise, thereby attempting to create a framework by which to address and analyse how exhibitions typify attitudes, thoughts and articulations on contemporary art.
For research into the construction of the genre of science fiction in Hindi by shedding light on how writers have used their own understanding of both science and the potential of science to perceive, comment on and reinvent their past, present and the future. It will also look at how productions, articulations and manifestations of science fiction influence aural and visual cultures in India.
