Staying Connected #29 | At The IFA Archive | October 29, 2025
Ever wondered what stories a book whispers when it’s been on a shelf for decades? Or how a film, a photograph, or a handwritten note can speak across time? This year has been a busy and exciting year for The IFA Archive—bringing materials to life, exploring personal and institutional archiving, and celebrating creative journeys through workshops, screenings, and hands-on experiences. Step inside to explore how archives preserve the past, inspire the present, and spark new creative possibilities.
Take a virtual tour of The IFA Archive and discover the stories, collections, and creative journeys it preserves.
What’s New
Spotlight on The IFA Archive traces IFA-supported works that have evolved into films, performances, and photo essays, revealing the creative processes behind them. Recent reels feature Anuj Malhotra, Soumendra Bhattacharya, Hansa Thapliyal, and Jayachandra Varma, giving you a glimpse into their unique approaches and creative journeys.
The IFA Archive Podcast brings artists and scholars who have been IFA Grantees or Project Coordinators to share their experiences of engaging with archives. Listen to the latest episodes featuring Sanjay Kak, KP Jayakumar, Mohan Kumar N, and Khandakar Ohida on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and Castbox.
Object of the Month
Discover Degrees of Exclusion of Languages by artist Poonam Gautam Jain, a project implemented by IFA under our Arts Practice programme in 2022–2023. Through letterpress, lithography, and printmaking, this project examines the hierarchies and erasures within five language scripts—Mahajani, Modi lipi, Tamil numerals, Devanagari, and Kannada.
Now part of The IFA Archive, these physical and digital letterpress types, lithographs, and catalogues reflect on how scripts can be reimagined as inclusive visual languages that bridge histories and identities.
Date with The Archive
Date with The Archive is a series of talks with artists and researchers whose practices have used archives extensively for their creative work, highlighting the archive as a resource for artistic and scholarly exploration.
The Shape-Shifting Archive was a session with multimedia artist Afrah Shafiq, where she showcased her experiments with hybrid forms, websites, video games, and sculptures, that reimagine archives as spaces for interaction, play, and reflection. She spoke about how her long-term engagement with institutional and informal archives, stories, and online materials shape her practice, weaving together history, memory, folklore, and fantasy. Afrah also reflected on her IFA fellowship with the CSSSC archives, where she created hybrid videos and the website Sultana’s Reality, highlighting narratives of 19th-century women’s resistance.
A Week at The IFA Archive was a specially curated series of public engagements to mark International Archives Day (June 09, 2025). The event invited the public to explore materials from over 900 IFA-supported projects that span books, films, performances, games, and websites. Through drop-in sessions, guided tours, workshops, and film screenings, visitors engaged directly with archival materials, experiencing the archive as a vibrant space for discovery, reflection, and learning.
Highlights included the participatory Archiving the Personal workshops, as well as screenings of Bela, Anatomy + Humanities, Palai: Landscapes of Longing, and The Last Shoemakers of The Doon Valley. These sessions showcased the diverse ways in which archives can inspire artistic creation and intellectual exploration, connecting audiences with stories, histories, and creative processes preserved across decades.
Read the coverage of the event in The Hindu, Deccan Herald, Mint, and Art and Design Dimensions
Musicophilia in Mumbai: Visual and Sonic Archives with Tejaswini Niranjana examined the phenomenon of musicophilia in Mumbai from the late 19th century to the present, drawing on archival materials, exhibitions, and her research projects. Tejaswini explored the emergence of a ingua musica in the city, connecting music enthusiasts—the deewane—to specific urban spaces, and how this shaped cultural expressions, including post-1930s film music. Her work highlighted the intersections of music, migration, and urban life, offering new insights into the city’s sonic and cultural history.
Visitors at the IFA Archive
This year, The IFA Archive welcomed 116 students from Christ College, Kristu Jayanti College, Jain University, and Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, offering them guided tours and engaging in discussions that unveiled the Archive’s collections, operations, and the practices behind preserving and interacting with diverse materials. These visits also sparked exciting collaborations—most notably, Srishti’s MA Contemporary Art Practice students, led by Kush Patel, worked closely with the Archive on a seminar on Archives and Digital Storytelling, gaining hands-on experience and a deeper understanding of the creative and scholarly potential of archival work.
Visitors at the IFA Archive
The IFA Archive offers opportunities to gain hands-on experience and learn archival practices firsthand. This year, we were delighted to host two interns—Lisha Saha and Lasya Katta, who contributed to organising, cataloguing, and preserving diverse collections, while supporting Archive events and projects.
"Working with the IFA Archive gave me a deeper understanding of how art and creativity are preserved for the future."
— Lisha Saha
(Masters of Arts (MA) in Education, Kanyashree University)
"Working for Archive Week was a great experience. I learned how archiving can be both careful and creative, helping to preserve and share artistic work."
— Lasya Katta
(MMS in Heritage Management, Centre for Heritage Management, Ahmedabad University)
Be part of preserving and celebrating art—upcoming internship opportunities at The IFA Archive will be announced soon.
Another World, Another Archive
Explore the CalArts Poster Archive, a digital repository showcasing over 200 screen-printed posters created by students of the California Institute of the Arts since the 1980s. The collection offers a vibrant visual history of CalArts events, reflecting the evolution of graphic design and the dynamic culture of the institution. Each poster—of concerts, workshops, exhibitions, and cultural activities—serves as a testament to the creative expressions and artistic innovations that have emerged from CalArts over the decades.
For a deeper dive into the archive, visit posters.calarts.edu
Stay in touch!
View The IFA Archive online, write to us at archive@indiaifa.org, or visit us in person in Bangalore. We are open to the public from Monday - Thursday (except on Government Holidays) with a prior appointment between 02:00 PM - 05:00 PM.
The IFA Archive is built with support from SP Lohia Foundation India.