Staying Connected #27 | The Mapping of a Body | July 29, 2024

Can pain ever be measured?

In this edition of Staying Connected, we focus on a project that explores the complex, elusive quality of female-specific pain and subjective patient experience against standardised diagnostic testing and procedures, to trace the hidden areas of experience that lie behind these dictated frames, markers and categorisations.

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, and open calls for proposals.

Unbound and Untethered is a webspace created by Devika Sundar in a project that draws from her lived experience with fibromyalgia and years of dismissal and misdiagnosis by healthcare professionals. The project threads together personal voices around female-specific experiences of illness, pain, dysphoria and disability, by employing different artistic research methodologies: recording oral histories; facilitating body mapping workshops; journaling; photography, drawing, painting; sound and moving image explorations. The project also dives deep into articles, research papers and medical journals to trace how the female body has been studied, mapped and visualised in allopathic and alternative medicine.

Devika was the Project Coordinator of this Foundation Project, implemented by IFA under its Arts Research programme, made possible with support from BNP Paribas India.

The IFA Film

Explore the many worlds of the arts we traverse with artists, scholars and practitioners. Made over the last year with Switch Studio, the film is an invitation to join us as an artist, a collaborator, or an enthusiast, to enable the journeys of artists, wherever it may take them. The film embraces various animation and story techniques to capture the spaces that artists inhabit, and also a little bit about how we have journeyed with them over the last 30 years.

Project Showcase@IFA

Project Showcase@IFA is a series of monthly presentations to showcase, discuss, and engage audiences with the diverse projects we support and implement across programmes. Watch and listen to conversations held between April to June 2024 on varied themes, from stories of the wetlands to the building of a lexicon on the habits during night.

Jol-a-bhumir Golpo Kotha/ Stories of the Wetland was a presentation by Nobina Gupta, and a conversation with Nayna Naskar and Ahiree Banerjee about a project that engaged with the stories of the wetlands located in the fringes of Kolkata, known as the East Kolkata Wetlands (EKW). 

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

'Deco in Delhi': The Genesis and Evolution of Art Deco Architecture in Delhi was a presentation by Geetanjali Sayal and Prashansa Sachdeva, about a project that captures the journey of the Art Deco style in Delhi and relooks at the city’s history through its lens. They were in conversation with Anica Mann.

Geetanjali Sayal received a grant from IFA under the Arts Research programme, made possible with support from Tata Trusts, with the corpus interest of an earlier seed grant.

pixel:dust : An Artistic Exploration of Time at Night was a presentation by Sonam Chaturvedi and Priyesh Gothwal about pixel:dust, a project that compiled a lexicon of multilingual terms and neologisms from artists across the world, that point to the disruptions caused by digital screens in our everyday lives.

Sonam Chaturvedi was the Project Coordinator of this Foundation Project implemented by IFA under the Arts Practice programme, made possible with support from Sony Pictures Entertainment Fund.

Open Calls

Are you an artist, scholar, cultural practitioner hoping to apply for support from IFA?
Request for Proposals are open across our programmes

Project 560:
The Neighbourhood Engagements category under this programme invites residents of Bangalore to implement projects that engage with the spaces, stories, and people of your neighbourhoods, in Bangalore. 

Deadline: August 02, 2024

The Project 560 programme is made possible with support from BNP Paribas India.

Archives and Museums:
IFA in collaboration with The Marg Foundation invites applications for IFA-Marg Scholarly and Creative projects.

Deadline: August 07, 2024

Arts Education:
The programme invites proposals from Government-aided and Non-profit Schools in India to implement arts-integrated projects that aim to create a solid foundation for arts-integrated teaching pedagogies and encourage curiosity and creativity among students.

Deadline: September 28, 2024

Programmes Open throughout the Year

Project 560: The Curated Artistic Engagements category under the programme accepts proposals throughout the year.
The Project 560 programme is made possible with support from BNP Paribas India.

New Projects at IFA

Explore the 60 projects we implemented in 2023-24 under our various programmes. The projects draw from various states and Union Territories and represent a wide range of artistic disciplines and languages. We look forward to journeying with these projects, and you can go through them here.

Upcoming Events

Project Showcase@IFA
Reframing Gender: Women in Cinema Collective (WCC): a Presentation by Miriam Chandy Menacherry and the WCC 

Wednesday, July 31, 2024 | 06:30 PM IST onwards

Register on Zoom or join us on Facebook Live

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

Become a Friend of IFA

What does art mean to you? For us, it is a way of life, a means to carry on, and a way to build community through artistic explorations. You too, can contribute to implementing such interventions that enrich lives. There are many ways you can support us: 

  • Become a Friend of IFA by donating upwards of Rs 5,000 here
  • Donate Reward Points or Loyalty Points from your HDFC and American Express cards or make a direct donation through Points for Good here

Your donation is tax-exempt under Section 80G of the Income Tax Act in India and under IRC 501 (c) (3) in the United States.

  • Partner with us for specific Arts-based Services for your institution, employees, students and clients which includes the conceptualisation, design and management of organisational evaluations, arts courses, art talks and workshops and customised arts events for different audiences. A very special and popular programme that we run is Catalyst – Arts, An Inspiration for Excellence – learn more here