Supriya Menon

Supriya completed her museum studies at the University of East Anglia, Norwich and post graduate degree programme in South Asian Area Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, UK. She currently works as a research assistant with Lord Cultural Resources, Mumbai, a planning firm that undertakes research projects with cultural institutions in India. Supriya is associated with the Patna museum project - one of the major state-funded museum projects in India. She also worked as project assistant for the Dharavi Biennale in Mumbai in 2016 for the exhibition Tabiyat that took place at the CSMVS, Mumbai.

For this fellowship, Supriya will initially research the collection of over 250 artworks at the Kerala Museum. She will then curate a minimum of two exhibitions from this collection over her fellowship period of ten months. Depending on the narrative she puts together, the two exhibitions can either be two independent shows or two editions of a larger narrative. Each of the exhibitions will be accompanied by wall texts that can guide an uninitiated viewer. She will also plan events around the exhibitions that will attract a diverse audience of all age groups. As one of Supriya’s strong points is communication, we hope that she will be able to make the museum a platform for lively dialogue and debate.

Supriya will also attempt to build a network of relations between artists, curators and institutions in the region, so that the museum will become a focal point for a variety of practitioners in Kochi.

Supriya lives in Mumbai, but she will visit Kochi as often as she can, and initiate a programme which can be executed by the other staff at the museum. The deliverables for the fellowship will include process images, photographs of the exhibition and other public programmes and textual documentation which includes invitation cards, essays, brochure/catalogue.

This fellowship was made possible with support from the Tata Trusts.