Staying Connected #23 | Looking Back, Looking Ahead | March 27, 2023

In the last month of this financial year, we have been thinking about the projects we have implemented so far and the stories they tell. Some respond to questions that have been with us for years. What can they tell us about our present? This edition of Staying Connected reflects on a project that worked with collections at one of the historical museums of India, the Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata. Looking at paintings from 200 years ago, the project offers a glimpse into the life of ordinary Indians, the perceptions of the colonial artists towards Indian life, and how these works enable us to look at concepts of modernisation and urbanisation today.

The newsletter also brings to you recordings of conversations with artists on IFA implemented projects and grants from the past few months, the new projects implemented by us, open calls for proposals, and our Annual Report for the year 2021-22.

What would a ‘candid’ painting of everyday life from 200 years ago look like?
What can such paintings tell us about the lives of the subjects of the paintings, and therefore of the painters who created them?

Image from the Sophie Charlotte Belnos collection at the Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata

‘Capturing’ India: Early Colonial Artists and their Depiction of Indian Life is an archival project that explored the breathtaking collection of early colonial paintings housed in the Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata. These paintings, prepared by European artists who visited India during the initial phase of colonial rule (roughly 1780s to 1830s), provide a window into the social and cultural world of contemporary Indians – a fascinating world which is otherwise largely lost to us. This project seeks to shed light on a body of paintings which has received relatively little attention even in histories of colonial art, namely, paintings of ordinary, day-to-day life. Explore some of these early colonial artists in the VMH collection through a website, a book and a series of Instagram posts.

Arjun Motwani is Project Coordinator of this Foundation Project, implemented by India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) under their Archives and Museums programme, in collaboration with Victoria Memorial Hall (VMH) Kolkata. This has been made possible with part-support from Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi.

Project Showcase @ IFA

Project Showcase @ IFA is a series of monthly online presentations to showcase, discuss, and engage audiences with the diverse projects we support and implement across programmes. Watch and listen to six such conversations held between July and December 2022, that touch upon varied themes, from the impact of internet shutdowns in Kashmir to relearning local history through artistic interventions in a school in Karnataka.

You are Offline looked at Sandhya Kumar’s project of the same name - a film in three parts that asks questions on the political, economic, personal and emotional dimensions of internet shutdowns.

Sandhya received a grant from India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) under the 25x25 special initiative, supported by lead donor Kshirsagar Apte Foundation, and philanthropy partners Titan Company Limited, and Priya Paul and Sethu Vaidyanathan.

Matchbox—Lighting Many New Ideas was a session with Sanjhi artist Syed Fakruddin Huseni about his ongoing project that engages students of Government Model Higher Primary School, Hongasandra, Bangalore with the design and aesthetics of matchboxes across the country.
This session was held in Kannada.

Syed received a grant from India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) under the Arts Education programme, made possible with support from Citi India.

ಕಂಪನಿ ನಾಟಕಗಳ ನಾಯಕಿಯರು /Nayakis of Kannada Company Theatre: Sexuality and Respectability with theatremaker Sharanya Ramprakash and journalist, writer Preethi Nagaraj discussed Sharanya’s ongoing research that examines how actresses of Kannada Company Theatre define and defy notions of female respectability through their performance and selfhood.
This session was held in Kannada.

Sharanya received a grant from India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) under the Arts Research programme. It is made possible with support from Tata Trusts, with the corpus interest of an earlier seed grant.

Tradition as Resistance: Eight Shahirs of Marathwada was a presentation by Keshav Waghmare and Medha Kale that looked at the work of eight Shahirs whose songs continue to be a source of inspiration for marginalised people to fight caste oppression and sustain the Dalit Movement in rural Marathwada.
This session was held in Hindi and English.

Keshav is the Project Coordinator of the Foundation Project implemented by India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) under the Archives and Museums programme, in collaboration with People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI). This has been made possible with part-support from Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi.

...ऐसे में ढूंढ़ लाना: Hidden Histories of Bombay Cinema with dancer and choreographer Siddhi Goel and cinema studies scholar Ira bhaskar discussed how looking into a cult film like Pakeezah reveals fascinating stories of people from various professions, castes and identities who have contributed to the shaping of the Hindi film industry. 

Siddhi received a grant from India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) under the Arts Research programme.

ಇತಿಹಾಸ ಮತ್ತು ಅದರ ಗುರುತುಗಳು / History and its Imprints was a session with artist Chandrahas Y Jalilhal about his project that made interventions in history, geography and the local legends that existed during the Bahmani Sultanate, among students of Government Higher Primary School, Kalaburagi.
This session was held in Kannada.

Chandrahas received a grant from India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) under the Arts Education programme, made possible with support from Citi India and Infosys Foundation.

Upcoming Events

Join us at our next project showcase!

ಸಿಂಹಕಟಾಂಜನ ಮತ್ತು ಇತರ ಶಾಸನಗಳು
(Simhakatanjana and Other Inscriptions)

A Presentation by Manjunatha A
Followed by a discussion with Ramesh B Hirejambur and Radhika Bharadwaj
This session will be held in Kannada

Wednesday, March 29, 2023 | 06:00 PM-07:00 PM IST | Zoom and Facebook Live

Manjunatha A will talk about a project implemented by IFA under the Arts Education programme that engaged students of Government High School in Baganakatte, Shivamogga in understanding the history of, and the aesthetics behind the stone inscriptions of the region. The presentation will be followed by a discussion with Ramesh B Hirejambur and Radhika Bharadwaj. 

Click here to register for the presentation on Zoom.

The session will also be streamed live on our Facebook page, for which no prior registration is required.

Manjunatha A is Project Coordinator for this Foundation Project implemented by India Foundation for the Arts (IFA), under the Arts Education programme.

Open Calls for Proposals
Are you an artist, scholar, cultural practitioner hoping to apply to IFA with your project proposal?

Programmes open throughout the year:

New Projects at IFA

For the year 2022-2023, we have implemented new projects under the Arts Practice programme, the Project 560 programme, and the Arts Education programme, with more projects under different programmes to follow. Read more about them below.

Ashavari Majumdar (Arts Practice) will create a residency for movement artists and filmmakers to collaboratively explore a language for the practice of the Indian dance-film, with a focus on non-classical and marginalised movement forms.

Vikram Iyengar (Arts Practice) will create four residential workshops for movement artists from East and North East India to inspire critical thinking while nurturing choreographic practices. 

Nakul Singh Sawhney (Arts Practice) will create workshops for young people from rural contexts to practice non-fiction filmmaking skills that will empower them to tell their own stories, in the socio-political context of North India.

Srilata Krishnan (Arts Practice) will create sixty poems structured as quasi-dramatic monologues, nesting within the narrative frame of prose passages, based on the interior lives of key women characters from the epic Mahabharata.

Deepa Dhanraj (Arts Practice) will explore the outbursts of artistic responses to the unfortunate death of Rohith Vemula, the circumstances that led to his death, and his suicide note, to create a film titled Speaking to Rohith. 

Poonam Gautam Jain (Arts Practice) will explore the politics of hierarchies and erasures of languages through a study of five scripts, namely Mahajani, Modi lipi, Tamil numerals, Devanagari and Kannada in the project titled Degrees of Exclusion of Languages.

Dhiraj Rabha (Arts Practice) will artistically investigate into the notions of home, displacement and identity of a people and a place as seen in the collective memory of the inhabitants of a camp set for surrendered members of the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) in Assam.

Amrita Barua (Arts Practice) will create a work of speculative fantasy eco-fiction centred around the ecology of the tidal sluice networks in Goa, with the outcome being an artist book. 

Samyuktha Pritham Chakravarthy (Arts Practice) will create a theatrical production titled The Mobile Girls Koottam set in a tea-shop built on a small truck which will travel to various locations facilitating conversation around women's lives, their work, bodies and identities.

Priyanka Chhabra (Arts Practice) will create an artist book that will reflect on the nature and relationship of personal archives to history, titled My Voice Is As Brittle As The Paper You Write On.

Aastha Gandhi (Arts Practice) will explore expressions for the haunting images of migrant bodies witnessed during the Covid-19 pandemic, through a performance titled The Other - Body of the Migrant, drawn from legislation that governs various aspects of migration in India.

Aditya Garg (Arts Practice) will bring together artists from different disciplines to explore breath as an artistic element across art forms, in the wake of the severe dearth of oxygen cylinders in the country during the pandemic and the abysmal Air Quality index in most towns in The Breath Project.

Nalini B (Arts Practice) will attempt to find expressions for the trans-generational trauma endured by women in the context of Dalit-Christian inheritance, using embroidery and knitting - skills that women artists have historically used as tools for political and feminist resistance, in the project titled Heirloom Sampler.

Mythili Anoop (Arts Practice) will attempt to reimagine Mughlai Vesham, a form of Mohiniyattam which incorporates the courtly style of Kathak including its costume, now erased from public memory.  

Thasil MA (Arts Practice) will travel through the West Coast of India, to explore imperial fort debris, lagoon ecosystems, and narratives of resistance movements in these places against the onslaught of aggressive development, towards the making of a lecture performance, in the project titled Muziris to Lakhpat.

Sonam Chaturvedi (Arts Practice) will bring together artists who are friends in late night potluck sessions to compile a lexicon of multilingual terms and neologisms that point to the disruptions caused by digital screens in our everyday lives in the project titled Rāk/Raak: Lexicon by the Screenlight.

Khandakar Ohida (Arts Practice) will research the possibility of a digital/virtual museum called Museum on the Moon, based on a 50-year-old collection of objects that carry emotions and history, which were stored in an ancestral mud house demolished in 2022.  

Bhamati Sivapalan (Arts Practice) will trace the collective memories of the erstwhile dwellers of the town of Old Tehri that went under water after the construction of a dam through science/ speculative fiction storytelling.

Clyde Herschel Thangkhiew (Arts Practice) will experiment with creating an interactive e-comic accompanied by soundtracks and visualisations, giving contemporary inflections to stories from Khasi folklore in the project titled Ka Ïng.

Joshua Remsanga Sailo (Arts Practice) will attempt to reconstruct Mizo folktales through movement arts that creates a new ‘folk dance’ in collaboration with community members in the project titled Pial Râl.

Chinar Satishbhai Shah (Project 560) will research into the lives of artist-led institutions that existed in Bangalore between 1990 and 2022 to create commissioned essays and art works. 

Mamta G Sagar (Project 560) will create a series of poetry events – primarily in Kannada, and a few other languages –  as public and private interactive sessions, in different parts of Bangalore to explore the psychogeography of the city through multilingual poetic exercises.

Shobhana Kumari (Project 560) will create a theatre performance that will attempt to capture vignettes of Bangalore through the lived experiences of a single woman in the city, and their interactions with the working class and queer communities. 

Shivakka P Kuravatti (Arts Education) will engage fifth, sixth, and seventh grade students of the Government Higher Primary School in Yadavagiri, Mysore district with the stories and traditional practices of a local rag picker community and a migrant community located near the school.

Santhosh DD (Arts Education) will engage fifth, sixth, and seventh grade students of Government Higher Primary School in Kalkere village, Hassan district with the traditional practice of tingalu mavana habba – a celebration of the rain gods - by connecting it to their curriculum in social science, mathematics, and languages. 

Rani DM (Arts Education) will engage eight grade students of the Government High School in Hosahundi village, Mysore district with Interactive Theatre practice and its applications by encouraging them to build arguments and dialogues around themes and ideas based on their school curriculum. 

Tajuddin Azad (Arts Education) will engage eighth grade students of the Government High School in Tarafile village, Kalaburagi district with the historic Khwaja Banda Nawaz Dargah by connecting it to their curriculum in social science and languages. 

Subhaschandra Bhajantri (Arts Education) will engage eighth grade students at the Government Girls Pre-University College, High School Section in Badami, Bagalkot district in a project titled Kappe Arabhatta Yaaru? (Who is Kappe Arabhatta?).

Balla RV (Arts Education) will engage eighth grade students at the Government Girls Pre-University College, High School Section, in Guledgudda, Bagalkot district in a project titled Maggada Maatu (Voices of the Loom). 

Aravind K (Arts Education) will engage sixth and seventh grade students of the Government Higher Primary School, in Moodambail village in Dakshina Kannada district in a project titled Chiv Chiv Hakkiyuu mattu Haaruva Chitteyu (Hums of Birds and Flying Butterflies). 

Suryakanth Nandur (Arts Education) will engage eighth grade students of the Government High School, in Pethsirur, Kalaburagi district, in making an illustrated book titled Chitra Samputa (A Picture Book) in the Surapura style of painting.

Geetha KH (Arts Education) will engage fifth and sixth grade students of the Government Lower Primary School, in Yelagudige, Chikkamagaluru district in a project titled Beejadinda Battalige (From Seed to Coffee Mug). 

Gangappa S Lamani (Arts Education) will engage 25 students from the fourth fifth and sixth grades of the Government Higher Primary School, in Alkeri Gauliwada, Uttara Kannada district in exploring a local community dance form Radmal that is rapidly vanishing from these regions and the cultural life of the Gauli community.

The Arts Practice programme is supported by Sony Pictures Entertainment Fund and the Project 560 programme by BNP Paribas India Foundation.
IFA Annual Report for 2021-2022 | Our Work at a Glance
 
Our Annual Report for the year 2021-2022 is a testament to the resilience and courage of the arts sector in the most difficult of times, and the projects that explored a range of themes and concerns in the arts and culture across multiple disciplines and geographical locations throughout the year.
Support Us
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Make your Year-End Contribution before March 31, 2023
 
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. A lot of what we do is because of the support from our individual donors, who help us in making the kind of projects we do possible. We invite you to make your year-end contribution by donating your loyalty points or becoming a Friend of IFA. Join a community that supports artists in adapting to new realities and keeping their work going.
 
Let the arts be by your side this year. Pick up our published works and some coasters!
 
If you enjoy reading about art practices, the changing landscape of the arts, and the creative processes of artists, our published materials might be worth taking a look into (available both online and in physical copies).

Our set of six coasters featuring select IFA projects over the years is available to purchase! Flip the coasters to read about each of these unique projects. Buy them online or write to us at contactus@indiaifa.org 

Your purchase will go towards supporting and implementing projects.