Koyna Tomar

Archival and Museum Fellowships
2017-2018

Grant Period: one year

Koyna has an MPhil in World History from the University of Cambridge. Her dissertation titled ‘Vision, Photography and the Making of Anthropology in South Asia’, charted the ambiguous role that photography played in the formation of ethnographic authority of three Indian anthropologists. For her research, she has worked extensively in institutional as well as personal archives in India and the UK. She is familiar with the ‘power of images’ and the ways in which community and collective memory are organised around them.

For this fellowship, Koyna will work towards curating a virtual exhibition. Her exhibition will use various vantage points in the city to explore life around it – for example, life in, on and around the river Jamuna, could be one in the series. In addition to the exhibition, Koyna with her experience as a visual researcher and her competence in web design will also collect metadata for images/collections, which will become an important resource for future creative projects at the archive.

The outcome will be the virtual exhibition. The Fellow’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will process images, audio recordings, texts and publication if any.

This fellowship is made possible with support from Tata Trusts.