Staying Connected #20 | Of Hope and Things to Come | February 01, 2022
We hope you are all safe and well. At IFA, we continue to work and engage with artists and scholars online to implement projects with them. This edition of Staying Connected brings to you the work of some of the artists, information about events conducted by us in the last few months, and also what’s new at IFA.
A young girl documents a day in the life of her family in East Kolkata Wetlands.
What does she see?
Read about a day in the life of Rupsha Mondal, a class 7 student of Kheadaha High School, South 24 Parganas, West Bengal, who writes about her father and grandfather, fish breeders in the East Kolkata Wetlands (EKW). This article is part of a larger project being implemented by IFA with Nobina Gupta as the Project Coordinator, titled Jol-a-bhumir Golpo Katha | Stories Of The Wetland. The project aims to document and disseminate the stories of the EKW as experienced by the community, created by its young people, with Rupsa being one of them. Click here to know more.
Our Annual Report for the year 2020-2021 is a journal of the difficult year that was, and the reinvigorating work we engaged with in 2020-2021 at IFA, across disciplines, forms, aesthetics, languages, and regions in India.
We hope the many stories and experiences in the report inspire you too.
An arts project that rethinks the boundaries of mythology and sci-fi
A classroom project that collaborates with students to learn English through local history
A film and essay that explore the narratives of an old, forgotten building in Bangalore
Listen to conversations around three projects that explored these ideas in their own ways, organised as part of Project Showcase @ IFA, a series of online presentations to showcase, discuss, and engage audiences with the diverse projects we support across programmes.
we are opposite like that
Click here to listen to a presentation by Himali Singh Soin and a conversation with Anshika Varma, about Himali’s book that used fictional mythologies to address the politics of ecology, language, and perspectives from the Global South.
Himali Singh Soin received a grant from IFA in 2018-2019 under the Arts Practice programme.
Click here for Sunil Kumar AM’s presentation about his ongoing project at Government Higher Primary School, Aletti, Dakshina Kannada district, that involves fifth grade students learning English through various literary and theatre arts processes by exploring local history.
Sunil received a grant from IFA in 2019-2020 under the Arts Education programme, made possible with support from Citi India.
Click here to listen to a presentation by Mahesh S and Anuj Malhotra about their project that sought to investigate into the conception of an old and iconic building in Bangalore, Karnataka, the impact it has had on the city and imagine its possible futures.
Mahesh received a grant from IFA in 2019-2020 under the Project 560 programme, made possible with support from Citi India and Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Company.
Experience a Kalayatra, where IFA grantees share their work
with local communities and schools.
Watch the recording of the virtual Kalayatra organised by IFA in December 2021, with teachers from Haveri District in Karnataka (this session was conducted in Kannada). At the session, Arts Education grantees Balappa Irappa Chinagudi and Praveen presented their projects. Kalayatras are a vital part of our Arts Education programme, designed in the hope that they will develop comprehensive approaches for integrating the arts with the school curricula, strengthening arts instruction and improving the students’ academic performance.
New Projects
We are delighted to announce the implementation of new projects under Productions, Explorations and Workshops, Residencies, Seminars categories of the Arts Practice programme and under the Neighbourhood Engagements category of Project 560 programme, for the year 2021-2022. Read more about them below.
Sahil Ravindra Naik (Productions) will produce a series of architectural sculptures based on memories, oral narratives and legends of people from the Kurdi village in Goa.
Tarun Bhartiya (Productions) will create a series of photographs that examine notions of identity and contestations around questions of faith and nation-building among the Niam Khasi people.
Anisha Baid (Productions) will create a video game that investigates into expressions of corporate culture and gendered labour as manifested on the computer interface.
Thoudam Victor Singh (Productions) will create a physical poetry performance that critiques the efficacy of six mega hydro projects in Manipur that failed to live up to their intended purpose.
Andrew Prashanth (Explorations) will experiment with motion and sound to create a form for Asunam, a non-Vedic mythical creature from Sangam Literature of the classical Tamil oeuvre.
Mohit Prakash Shelare (Explorations) will examine how the trauma of seeing violent imagery across the internet including social media can be sublimated through artistic processes of drawing.
Nihaal Faizel (Explorations) will engage with three popular children’s television shows from the latter part of the 1990s, as cultural documents in media that traces shifts in our lives in the India of the post-liberalisation era.
Rukhsana Nazeen (Explorations) will creatively express the experiences of the everyday impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bidar through a series of Afsaanche – very short, paragraph length stories in Urdu – and its digital exploration in the audio format of the podcast.
Suvani Suri (Explorations) will examine the anatomy of a collective song We Shall Overcome, through aggregating data about its musicality, structure, popularity maps, analytics, and audience interactions such as YouTube comments, of its various iterations across time, geography, language and political context.
Singh Siddharth (Workshops, Residencies, Seminars) will create a design residency for architects and designers to reimagine the architectonics of performance spaces including those for theatre in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and physical distancing.
Ishan Hendre (Neighbourhood Engagements) will create a series of video vignettes capturing stories of the gold and silver crafting community in Cubbonpete and Anchepete in Bangalore.
Open Calls for Proposals
Are you an artist, scholar, cultural practitioner
hoping to apply for support from IFA?
Come join our team to help administer projects
with artists, scholars and practitioners in the field!
We are currently inviting applications for the following positions:
Programme Officer: Archives and Museums programme
Grants and Projects Officer
The candidate will be responsible for administration of grants, implementation of projects, and legal issues related to the organisation. For more information about the role, click here.
Application deadline: February 10, 2022.
Would you like to be surrounded by the arts this year
and get a glimpse of what we do?
Our 14-month Limited Edition 2022-2023 desk calendar features select projects that we have supported in the last two years. You choose any image that is to your liking, and let the artwork do its magic!
We also have a beautiful set of six coasters featuring IFA projects over the years, so you can be surrounded with the arts as you take a break and enjoy your cuppa.
Buy them both here.
Become a Friend of IFA
At IFA, we believe that the arts and culture are essential to our individual and community lives, and for a more equitable and just world. We continue to turn to the arts to regain trust and hope in our lives, and also take inspiration. In this new year, we invite you to become a Friend of IFA, and join a community that supports artists in adapting to changing realities and keeping their endeavours going.