Hello Readers!

India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) is happy to be back with news on our work between April and July 2018! Scroll for exciting updates across our four programmes—Arts Research, Arts Practice, Arts Education, and the Archival and Museum Fellowships, along with updates on events and an interview with Museum fellows who worked on different projects at the Assam State Museum, Guwahati! We are also delighted to announce the third edition of Project 560, this year! Also, we invite you to become a Friend of IFA and support us with an Annual Donation of Rs 5,000/– upwards!

Please visit our website or follow us on Twitter, facebook, and YouTube for regular updates!

We would love to hear from you—write to us at contactus@indiaifa.org with any feedback or query.

Warmly,
The IFA Team

We are delighted to announce the third edition of Project 560, this year! Following two editions of Project 560 in 2014 and 2015 respectively, IFA organised a Roundtable Meeting with an external panel of experts in August 2016, towards sharpening our focus for the coming years. The experts on the panel were Suresh Jayaram, Ramesh Aravind, Deepa Ganesh, Jeebesh Bagchi, Zac O’Yeah and Anant Maringanti. Vivek Shanbhag participated in absentia, through a note he sent. The Project 560 plan is the outcome of the recommendations made by this panel. Project 560 is committed to a long-term, continuous engagement with the city through multipronged strategies including grantmaking and collaborations.

Turn Bangalore into a stage, a canvas, a notebook or a digital courtyard! Tap into its varied voices, spaces, histories, memories, aspirations, and expressions. Delve into the city's layered pasts, engage with its many presents, or imagine diverse futures. Who is the city? What does it mean to be a Bangalorean? Where do the strengths and challenges of the city lie? If Bangalore is on your mind, Project 560 is for you.

Support under Project 560 is available in the following categories:

Support for engagement with neighbourhoods: Support is available to those interested in engaging with the spaces, stories, and people of their neighbourhood in Bangalore. Such engagements could be an event or a series of events that include storytelling sessions, music, street performances, temporary / permanent installations, mapping exercises, walks and so on, that would enable people to rethink their neighbourhoods and use the arts and culture to express the joys and challenges of living together. Four neighbourhoods will be supported and the maximum amount for a year-long engagement will be Rs 25,000 each. The call for proposals under this category was circulated last month in June 2018 and the last date for applications was July 15, 2018. We are presently going through the proposals for a final selection.

Tune into an interview of Executive Director Arundhati Ghosh and Programme Officer Krishnamurthy TN by Radio Jockey Lakshmi Karunakaran of Radio Active (90.4 FM) on Project 560 and the Neighbourhood call, here!

Grants for organisations: Grants are available for city-based organisations for the period of a year, to curate a body of work that reflects upon, asks questions of, and / or offers multiple imaginations of the city. Applications are welcome from arts and/or non-arts organisations working towards artistic outcomes and public engagements throughout the year. Collaborations between those organisations working in different fields are also encouraged. The organisation could have its own physical space or could be working in different spaces across the city. Two organisations will be supported and the maximum grant amount for a year-long project will be Rs 8 lakh each. The call for proposals under this category will be circulated end of July 2018.

Grants for individuals: Grants are available for practitioners and researchers to creatively engage with the city's pasts, presents or futures through critical inquiry. As practitioners, you could be writers, poets, performing / performance artists, visual artists, filmmakers, new media or digital artists. In addition, collaborative projects between artists and researchers are also encouraged. While applicants may be based anywhere in India, the project has to be undertaken in Bangalore. Three grants up to a maximum of Rs 4 lakh each will be made. The call for proposals under this category will be circulated in August 2018.

Project 560 Festival

Look out for the Project 560 Festival in two years! Curated by IFA, this festival, comprising exhibitions, performances, and panel discussions drawn from completed or ongoing Project 560 grants, will also weave in threads of multiple conversations on the city.

Bangalore, What's Your Pincode?

For more about Project 560, please contact Sumana Chandrasekhar at sumana@indiaifa.org or call 080 2341 4681 / 82 / 83.

Project 560 is partnered by Citi India.

The Arts Research programme at IFA supports research into the histories and expressions of artistic practices in India. Under this programme, scholars, researchers and practitioners receive support for projects that investigate marginalised or relatively unexplored areas; create spaces for dialogue between theory and practice; offer new readings and frameworks for artistic practices; and use interdisciplinary approaches to break new conceptual ground. At IFA we encourage projects in Indian languages other than English, in order to contribute towards discourse-building in multiple language contexts.

For this year’s Request for Proposals, sent out in April 2017, we have received 360 queries and 163 final proposals. We now look forward to months of intense discussions as we convene a panel of experts to study the shortlisted proposals, and then make final grants in October 2018! Stay tuned.

The Arts Research programme for the years 2017 to 2019 is supported by Titan Company Limited.

The Arts Practice programme supports critical practice in the arts. It encourages practitioners working across artistic disciplines to question existing notions through their practice. Currently, there are many proposals under evaluation and we look forward to introducing you to the final grants in the next newsletter! Stay tuned.

The Arts Practice programme welcomes queries and applications through the year!We look forward to receiving your proposal soon! Click on this video to watch how you can apply. Please send your proposal in any Indian language, including English, soon! Visit our website for more information or write to shubham@indiaifa.org or sumana@indiaifa.org

Programme Officers Sumana Chandrashekar and Shubham Roy Choudhury
talk about the Arts Practice programme and how you can apply in the video above

The Arts Education programme titled Kali Kalisu, (‘Learn and Teach’ in Kannada), focusses on integrating arts with the curriculum in government schools in Karnataka. It attempts to achieve this objective through grants made to artists and teachers; and facilitating training workshops for teachers and block–level events for administrators.

Arts and culture trip to Bhopal / Madhya Pradesh

An arts and culture trip to Madhya Pradesh was organised for 26 IFA Arts Education grantees from government schools in Karnataka. Some of these sites included the Bhimbetka caves, Bhojpur, Sanchi Stupa, Udayagiri Caves, Birla Mandir, Begum Tajul Masjid, Bharat Bhavan, Madhya Pradesh Tribal Museum, and the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya. This trip was designed to introduce to and enable participants to experience an overview of the various stages and periods of the arts. It also enabled debates on the important links in the fields of arts and culture, development, and education.

"It was a memorable week. Each day was so caringly planned that the entire group easily partook of the ‘Bhopal spirit’! It also helped me in having a deeper understanding of the team."

Krishnamurthy TN, Programme Officer for Arts Education

"The Bhopal educational tour organised by IFA reflected and encapsulated the Kannada proverb Desha sutti nodu, Kosha odhi nodu (‘travel the world and see, read a dictionary and see’). This trip ignited ways of looking at new dimensions in art. It also infused in us a new spirit and energy to carry out creative projects in the future. I would like to thank IFA for providing us with this platform."

Nagaraja M Hudeda, Teacher
Government Higher Primary School, Uttara Kannada District, Karnataka

Twenty-six teachers and artists from Karnataka travelled to Madhya Pradesh in April 2018 as part of the Arts Education programme

Teachers’ training programme in Davanagere

A three-day teachers’ training programme was conducted at the District Agricultural Training Centre, Kadajji village in Davanagere district to introduce participants to the importance of arts-integrated pedagogies from June 19 to 21, 2018. Fifty teachers from seven taluks, two DIET (District Institute of Education and Training) principals, and nine resource persons were in attendance. One of the sessions included teachers innovatively using waste material as props as they enacted different roles and themes. Through this training, we reached out to 322 peer teachers, 118 villages, 7,839 students, and 16,823 families. Such events are held through the year in various parts of Karnataka by faculty members and resource persons of arts and education—many of whom have been associated with IFA, facilitated by our Programme Officer for Arts Education, Krishnamurthy TN.

Three-day orientation with Plan India

After ten years of the Arts Education / Kali Kalisu programme at IFA where we have concentrated on working with teachers, artists, students and the larger community in government schools in Karnataka, we are now looking at a pilot project to take a part of this initiative to another state. As a step in this direction, we have collaborated with Plan India, an NGO working to advance children’s rights and equality for girls. We conducted a three-day orientation from July 11 to 13, 2018 in Bangalore. This project is our attempt to see how the pilot initiative could work in Rajasthan.

A three-day orientation was held in collaboration with Plan India in Bangalore in July 2018 to work on a pilot Arts Education project in Rajasthan

In response to the Requests for Proposals (from artists and teachers) circulated in May, together we have received 60 queries and 43 draft proposals. The subjects of these proposals covered environment, children’s literature, folklore, costumes, dance, the arts and more, so far. The proposals submitted came from the districts of Mysore, Davanagere, Dharawad, Dakshina Kannada, Uttara Kannada, Chamarajanagara, Shivamogga, Bangalore, Ramanagara, Mandya, Haveri, Raichur, Ballari, Vijayapura, Hasana, Tumkur, Kalaburgi and Belagavi.

As with the previous year, programme staff devoted considerable time engaging with applicants to help them develop and sharpen proposals in accordance with the focus of the programme. These grants will be finalised in August 2018 and we look forward to introducing you our new grantees and their projects in the next newsletter. Stay tuned!

The Arts Education programme has been supported by Citi India since 2016.

The Archival and Museum Fellowships initiative seeks to provide practitioners and researchers with the opportunity to generate new, critical and creative approaches to reading, seeing, and interacting with materials in archives and museums. It is also invested in energising these spaces as platforms for dialogue and discourse, to create awareness and increase public engagement.

New Archival Fellowships awarded

We are delighted to introduce you to the recipients of four diverse Archival Fellowships and their projects! In April 2018, we invited applications for Fellowships–in collaboration with the cultural history archive at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC) and with the Saptak Archives, Ahmedabad. The cultural history archives at CSSSC contains a wide variety of visual materials across genres from 19th and 20th century Bengal and includes books, journals, popular paintings, prints, posters, hoardings, advertisements and commercial art productions. The archive has also recently acquired the digitised records of the Calcutta Improvement Trust (CIT) which records the urban and municipal history of 20th century Calcutta. On the other hand, Saptak Archives has over 20,000 recordings of masters from various gharanas, traditions and styles within Hindustani music, both vocal as well as instrumental. Both these fellowships are designed to support Fellows to work with archival materials in innovative ways.

Archival Fellowships with CSSSC:

Researcher Diksha Dhar will explore the relationship between the city of Kolkata and its citizens, and the many different registers through which the city is experienced. The project will locate Kolkata as a site of both colonial encounter and colonial modernity, and investigate the many mechanisms through which an ‘authentic’ experience of the city is constructed, distributed and negotiated in the everyday.

Architect Nilina Deb Lal will focus specifically on the legacy of the Calcutta Improvement Trust (CIT), the records of which document the urban and municipal history of 20th century Calcutta. This project will study the growth of the city of Kolkata in the years preceding the formation of the Trust in 1911, as well as the alterations in the years that came after.

Archival Fellowships with Saptak Archives:

Hindustani classical vocalist Radhika Joshi Ray will document the journey of the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana, one of the ‘newer’ gharanas of Hindustani Music founded by Ustad Alladiya Khan. She will attempt to compile an important resource that not only traces the journey of the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana, but also studies how different ragas and bandishes have evolved over generations across the different streams within the tradition.

Smit Dharia, a student of Hindustani music, will make accessible and available to the public, the forgotten recordings of celebrated exponents of Hindustani Music through audio/video podcasts. He believes that listening to these old exponents is absolutely essential for the learners of music as well as for those aficionados who are listening to music for the very first time.

The Archival and Museum Fellowship initiative for the years 2015 to 2018 is supported by Tata Trusts.

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We organise grant showcases that take the form of presentations, performances, panel discussions, film screenings and more, for multiple audiences across the country. These grant showcases help create dialogue and in turn, become exciting spaces of discovery and discussion. Our staff also participated in various seminars, conferences, and open houses to talk about our programmes, projects and the vision of grantmaking and arts philanthropy. Below is an account of these activities over the last few months:

Exhibition of three projects in Guwahati

An exhibition of three projects—“Brahmanising the Brahmaputra: The Divine Feminine in Pre-Ahom Assam” by Shubhasree Purkayastha; “Interpreting Space: Naga Realm” by Sayantan Maitra Boka, and “Museums are Closed at Night” by Desire Machine Collective on re-viewing religion and history in Assam; ethnographic display and representation of Naga culture; and the objects, history and role of the Assam State Museum respectively, took place at the Assam State Museum in Guwahati which opened on April 21, 2018 and had closing dates in April and May. Read an article on the occasion in The Telegraph!

Shubhasree Purkayastha, Sayantan Maitra Boka, and Desire Machine Collective received Museum Fellowships under the IFA Archival and Museum Fellowships initiative, in collaboration with Assam State Museum, Guwahati, made possible with support from Tata Trusts.

Scroll to the bottom of the newsletter to read an interview with the three Fellows in ‘Point of View’!

Theatre performance and lecture in Bangalore

A theatrical performance of Maya Bazaar by The Children of Surabhi Theatre, Hyderabad which featured an act set in Ghatotkacha’s cave, followed by a lecture-demonstration by Dr Gautam Dayal linking the worlds of art and science, was organised at the Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum, Bangalore on June 24, 2018. In addition, a three-day workshop was conducted for school children on the techniques of stagecraft rooted in science. These activities were organised by theatre artiste Jayachandra Varma Rekandar and filmmaker Hansa Thapliyal.

Jayachandra Varma Rekandar and Hansa Thapliyal received a Museum Fellowship under the IFA Archival and Museum Fellowships initiative, in collaboration with the Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum, Bangalore, made possible with support from Tata Trusts.

A theatrical performance of Maya Bazaar by The Children of Surabhi Theatre, Hyderabad at Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum, Bangalore organised by theatre artiste Jayachandra Varma Rekandar and filmmaker Hansa Thapliyal, in June 2018

IFA Open House and Research Presentation in Silchar, Assam

An IFA Open House session by IFA staff along with a presentation by musician Rongili Biswas on the personal archive of her father, Hemango Biswas, musician and icon of the Assam IPTA (Indian People’s Theatre Association) Movement, took place at Dasharupak Cultural Organisation, Silchar, Assam on May 18, 2018. For her project, Rongili studied the music and collaboration between two stalwarts of the movement—Hemango Biswas and Bhupen Hazarika during the linguistic riots of Assam in the 1950s and 1960s. Read the report in the Bengali daily Dainik Samayik Prasanga!

Rongili Biswas received an Archival Fellowship under the IFA Archival and Museum Fellowships initiative, made possible with support from Tata Trusts.

An IFA Open House session by IFA staff along with a research presentation by musician Rongili Biswas at Dasharupak Cultural Organisation, Silchar, Assam in May 2018

Exhibition in Shillong

An exhibition titled “Cults of the Khla” by researcher Avner Pariat was held at North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong from June 18 to July 05, 2018. The show, based on research on the oral narratives and extensive interviews conducted of the tiger as a cultural, social and political symbol in Khasi cultural practices, saw between 150 and 170 visitors. The exhibition will now tour other parts of Shillong and Meghalaya.

Avner Pariat received a grant from India Foundation for the Arts, under the Arts Research programme.

Cults of the Khla, an exhibition on the tiger as a sociocultural and political symbol in Khasi practices by researcher Avner Pariat at North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong from late June to early July, 2018

Film screening in Bangalore

The film Palai—Landscapes of Longing was screened followed by a discussion with the filmmaker Jayakrishnan Subramanian. The film is a metaphoric interpretation of Tamil classical poetry and artistic depiction of the desert landscape of Palai in Sangam literature. Juxtaposing the contemporary socio-political context of Tamil migrant workers in the Middle East and this ancient form of poetry, the film explores modern slavery, labour and migration. The film screening and discussion took place at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) Bengaluru City Campus on July 12, 2018. Click here to watch a discussion by Jayakrishnan!

Jayakrishnan Subramanian received a grant from India Foundation for the Arts, under the Arts Research programme.

The film Palai—Landscapes of Longing was screened followed by a discussion with the filmmaker Jayakrishnan Subramanian at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) Bengaluru City Campus in July 2018

IFA Open House in Bhubaneswar

We conducted an IFA Open House in collaboration with the Centre for Human Sciences at Actors’ Studio, Bhubaneswar on July 16, 2018. IFA Staff shared details about our work, projects and the application process for our various programmes.

Members of our staff travelled far and wide to participate in discussions on arts and philanthropy.

In April 2018, we participated in a two-day consultation ‘National Consultation on Mapping Creative Industry and Economy in India’ organised by the Centre for Culture, Media and Governance at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi on April 16 and 17, 2018. Menaka Rodriguez, Head, Resource Mobilisation and Outreach, who represented IFA, participated in a panel discussion titled “Creating Innovative Entrepreneurs”.

Menaka Rodriguez, Head, Resource Mobilisation and Outreach, participated in ‘National Consultation on Mapping Creative Industry and Economy in India’ organised by the Centre for Culture, Media and Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi in April 2018

In the same month, Arundhati Ghosh, Executive Director, delivered a lecture titled “Gaps, Erasures, and Silences: How the Arts Provoke History” on the occasion of the 79th Foundation Day of the Assam State Museum and the 26th Foundation Day of the Indian Art History Congress in Guwahati on April 21, 2018. This was also the opening of the exhibition of three projects by IFA Fellows Sayantan Maitra Boka, Shubhasree Purkayastha, and Desire Machine Collective.

In May 2018, Menaka Rodriguez continued her participation in the Australia Council for the Arts’ Arts Leaders Programme. She attended the second residential organised in Palmcove, Northern Queensland. As part of the programme, she had the opportunity to explore Mossaman Gorge in the Daintree Rainforest; experimented with the creation of Linocuts in a session led by local artists; and discussed issues of leadership with fellow participants. The International Arts Leaders programme, a joint initiative of the Australia Council for the Arts and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), is designed to empower leaders in the arts and cultural industries from countries across the Indo-Pacific region.

"The leadership programme of the Australia Council for the Arts has opened up for me a whole new world of engagement. The programme has given us the opportunity to look further east and learn from practices outside of the American and European context. This experience and engagement with the arts in Australia has been extremely enriching. We have been able to dive deep into discussions around leadership and the art sector knowing that we have a supportive peer network of 23 fellow arts leaders who bring a wealth of collective experiences to the programme."

Menaka Rodriguez, Head, Resource Mobilisation and Outreach

ARTS SERVICES
The Arts Services initiative at India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) enables corporates and organisations to support specific arts projects and experiences that we see value in, and which are close to their hearts. This initiative is not part of our grant programmes, but arises out of our impulse to connect supporters with artists in collaborative projects. It also enables us to raise more resources for our grantmaking.

We will be happy to work with you on diverse Arts Services, which include the conceptualisation, design and management of arts courses, talks, and workshops and for different audiences. For more details on the Arts Services provided by IFA please write to menaka@indiaifa.org

CATALYST
Catalyst—Arts, An Inspiration for Excellence is an initiative that continues to bring to corporate houses, a wide range of accomplished artists from the worlds of theatre, literature, visual and performing arts, to share their creative journeys and pursuit of excellence. Catalyst also includes a version that can be customised to offer arts workshops along with talks.

Catalyst is a 12–month long engagement, with one session each by eight accomplished maestros including Nandita Das, Raghu Rai, Malavika Sarukkai, Aditi Mangaldas, BN Goswamy, Ratna Pathak Shah, Sanjna Kapoor, Romi Khosla, Arundhati Nag, Jitish Kallat, Atul Dodiya, Rahul Ram, Varun Grover, Benjamin Gilani, and Astad Deboo.

This quarter we collaborated with a number of partners to offer various arts engagements wherein diverse artists shared their creative journeys. We had musician Moushumi Bhowmik at Biocon Limited on May 18; musician Rahul Ram at Sasken Technologies Limited on May 24; a music workshop by Harmonica Huddles at Sasken Technologies Limited on June 15; and photographer Amit Madheshiya and writer and researcher Shirley Abraham at Biocon Limited on June 22, 2018.

Photographer Amit Madheshiya shared his creative journey at Biocon Limited, Bangalore in June 2018

For more details on Catalyst or if you would like to bring this programme to your company, please write to Joyce Gonsalves at joyce@indiaifa.org

SMART (Strategic Management in the Art of Theatre)
IFA continued its involvement in the SMART (Strategic Management in the Art of Theatre) programme, as a managing partner with Junoon, under the aegis of India Theatre Forum (ITF) throughout 2017-2018. The first of its kind programme in the country, SMART has received critical acclaim from the theatre community and created much enthusiasm and excitement in the field.

SMART meeting in New Delhi

A SMART meeting was held in New Delhi on May 14 and 15, 2018 to decide on the future of SMART. Here, SMART Core Team members comprising Arundhati Ghosh, Sanjna Kapoor, Sameera Iyengar, Sudhanva Deshpande, and Sunil Shanbag devised a shorter, concise version called SMART LITE to take to different cities and towns. The plan is to make the model more accessible to theatre groups, to identify problems and explore opportunities, spread across India. Watch this space!

MAATHUKATHE/CONVERSATIONS
For five years between May 2013 and 2018, we organised over 60 MaathuKathe (‘Conversations’ in Kannada), monthly sessions where we opened our office to the public and invited artists to perform, screen their film, read from their work, or talk about their projects and creative processes. These sessions have been marked by invigorating discussions on the arts, culture, and society! We organised the last session with sculptor Kanaka Murthy in May 2018! Kanaka spoke about her experiences and insights as a woman sculptor in India, in a male-dominated domain.

Over the years, the variety of sessions have ranged from a performance piece by the Sarjapur Blues Band; a book discussion by screenwriter and film director Kamal Swaroop on Tracing Phalke; a talk on work music and songs from Bengal by researcher Shubhasree Bhattacharyya; to a storytelling session by Vikram Sridhar! We attempted to reach out to a diversity of audiences which has comprised of students, media, professors, artists and teachers. Maathukathe has now run its course, and we are looking at different ways of engaging with audiences in Bangalore, as we begin with Project 560 this year! Stay tuned!

The last MaathuKathe session at IFA was with sculptor Kanaka Murthy in May 2018. For five years from 2013 to 2018, these monthly sessions have been marked by invigorating discussions on the arts, culture, and society!

Upcoming Events

For exciting upcoming events featuring grant showcases across the country, stay tuned! We look forward to seeing you at the following event—do spread the word.

Join us for an exhibition of works based on the printing and publishing of Bengali Little Magazines, produced during a two-phase workshop held in Uttarpara, Hooghly in West Bengal. The workshop was organised by editor, publisher, and writer Susnato Chowdhury. The exhibition will include a special section dedicated to Darjeeling's neglected magazines and their untold histories. This event will also include the release of a book based on the workshop, titled Mudran Karmashala: Little Magazine: File Copy. The exhibition will take place from August 01 to 04, 2018, 03:00 to 07:00 PM at Boi-Chitra, No 15 Bankim Chatterjee Street (2nd Floor, Indian Coffee House, College Street) in Kolkata!

Susnato Chowdhury received a grant from India Foundation for the Arts, under the Arts Practice programme, with part support from Biocon Foundation.

For more details on these events, do sign up for our emails here, follow us on facebook or Twitter for regular updates, or simply tune into our website at www.indiaifa.org/events

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Arts Practice
Request for Proposals from practitioners
[Open All Year]
For more information, write to the Programme Officers Sumana Chandrashekar at sumana@indiaifa.org and Shubham Roy Choudhury at shubham@indiaifa.org

Experience the Joy of Exploration. Become a Friend of IFA with an Annual Donation of Rs 5,000/– upwards!

Become a Friend of IFA and journey with us through the many worlds of the arts and culture

Become a Friend of IFA and set out on an exciting journey with IFA with an Annual Donation of Rs 5,000/– through the many worlds of the arts and culture! As a Friend of IFA, you along with 400+ Friends of IFA, will experience the arts and culture through specially- curated events, engage in discussions and debates, and enjoy exclusive sessions on the arts and culture! Connect with artists, musicians, dancers, actors, researchers, filmmakers, performers, educators, archivists and fellow art enthusiasts!

As a Friend of IFA, your passionate support will bring to life projects that examine our pasts, enable us to make collective sense of our present, and dream of shared and vibrant futures, together. Your contribution will help projects reach diverse publics—as books, films, performances, educational materials, exhibitions and more!

IFA has been able to facilitate more than 540 arts projects, disbursing Rs 24 crore over two decades across India—because of you. All these arts projects are made possible because of your support. Every donation you make helps us extend support to the field.

To learn more write to menaka@indiaifa.org

To make your contribution online, click here (please do not use special characters ~,!,@,#,$,%,^,&,*,(,),., while filling the form)

To make your contribution by cheque, click here

We look forward to your support.

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Painters, Poets, Performers: The Patuas of Bengal

Have you picked up your copy of Painters, Poets, Performers: The Patuas of Bengal by Ritu Sethi yet? A visually rich and informative book on the history and evolution of Patachitra—literally, ‘painting on cloth’; it provides an outline of this narrative tradition of pictorial storytelling and its multi-talented, polymath makers in Bengal and Odisha.
Please click here to order your copy for Rs 500/- (exclusive of courier charges) now!

This book is supported by Infosys Foundation.

Have you picked up your copy of Painters, Poets, Performers: The Patuas of Bengal by Ritu Sethi yet?

Other Publications

Embroidering Futures: Repurposing the Kantha
In 2012, we published Embroidering Futures: The Repurposing of Kantha, edited by Ritu Sethi. This book traces this journey of kantha from its origins to its current avatar, through the tales and recollections of collectors, inheritors, designers and producers of this unique piece of embroidered cloth. The publication is now available to read online. Click here to read the PDF for free!

This book was supported by Infosys Foundation.

ArtConnect
We also have other interesting publications to offer, including back issues of ArtConnect, a magazine on the arts and culture and postcards showcasing our grantees' work:

Between 2008 and 2013, IFA published 13 issues of ArtConnect featuring lively, compelling writing and artwork across a host of disciplines and genres, from female impersonators in Company Theatre in Kannada; Marathi Little Magazines; the forgotten lives and songs of the tawai’if in Benaras; violence in Kannada cinema; gender and the Indian documentary; to the visual culture of early Urdu magazines! Please note that while each issue is priced at Rs 100/–, Volume 7 is Rs 150/– You can avail of special anniversary discounts on Limited Edition collections. All the proceeds from the sale of publications go back into grantmaking!

IFA Postcards
If you like the work we do, this set of ten IFA Postcards becomes a memento. Gift it to your friends and share and support the arts. These postcards, which feature a selection of exciting IFA projects, can be ordered at a nominal and suggested donation of Rs 200/– Your donation amount goes back into grantmaking. Order a set now!

To know more, write to contactus@indiaifa.org

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IFA to Sayantan Maitra Boka: Tell us about the collection of Naga objects / material at the Assam State Museum? What were some of the objects you used in your installation and what was the objective?

Sayantan Maitra Boka: When you look at how objects in the Museum were obtained, part of the Naga collection has come from donation and rest acquired and bought from local Konyak tribes. These objects of everyday use which range from clothes, utensils, weapons to jewellery and smoking pipes etc., were not valuable in terms of money but have a strong cultural context in demonstrating how people lived. In the past, the giving of personal belongings to strangers was considered taboo. The rest of these objects were laid out for the dead as the Nagas believed in an afterlife. They gathered all material culture as part of their tomb. Most Naga art of the past were made of perishable material and they tried to protect them against recurrent enemy attacks and fire. The strict observations of the rituals and taboos surrounding certain arts deterred artists from creating long-lasting art. The eradication of certain cultural practices of the Nagas by the Christian clergy and conversion to Christianity in less than a century also added to this non-availability of art objects. The best Naga ethnographic collection is I believe housed in international museums like the Pitt Rivers at Oxford due to explorations by several anthropologists from the West in the early 20th century. I had the privilege of displaying some Naga objects, which seems like an anomaly in sculptures-objects, as if the artist is gazing back at you through his sculptures.

A work of art, then, is a form created by the artist out of human experience. At the same time, it has a cultural context. It existed in time, and its form reflects the forces of that time – social, economic, political, and religious. From this angle, the form reveals a style – a mode of the time of its creation, a mode that colours all artworks of the time so that together, these objects express the essence of the time. Buildings, paintings, sculptures, pottery, literature, music, and drama – all the arts reflect the mode of their age. Each elucidates the others.

Artist Sayantan Maitra Boka contextualised the Naga collection that is still very much a part of the living culture of the Nagas as part of his project exhibited at the Assam State Museum, Guwahati late April 2018

IFA to Sayantan Maitra Boka: What is your take on living culture vs. museumising objects – especially when many of these objects are anthropological or ethnographical in nature?

Sayantan Maitra Boka: Through time the Nagas dispersed to form their tribes and sub-tribes, communities, and clans of their own. They lived in villages on hilltops and created and adhered to their respective traditions. These traditions can be visually experienced by way of their attire comprising headdresses, adornments, jewellery, but also, through architecture, music, and songs and artistic expressions in wood and stone, statues and menhirs (monoliths).

In Naga clothing and other physical/ tangible tribal expressions, their individual style and taste become apparent. Cultural symbolism is depicted in Naga jewellery, textiles, and tattoos. There is a wide variety of objects that they use to express themselves as a specific tribe, community, village or clan. The western museum world primarily foregrounds an appreciation of the richness and the complexity and recognizes the beauty and symbolism of Naga culture.

As highlighted earlier, in the 19th century with the imposition of British rule in India, Christianity was introduced and with American Baptist missionaries becoming active, most Nagas converted to Christianity as a result. The church intervened and abolished headhunting practices. Along with it they eliminated some very vital cultural practices of Naga animistic religion, which thereby created an identity crisis.

The morung (the ceremonial house of men) was the most important social, political, and religious component of the village and had no individual existence apart from that of the community. It functioned as the guardhouse and armory, recreation club, and centre for education, art and discipline. It was here that debates and discussions concerning the interests of the clan and village, and economic and political rituals were held and the art of warfare and skills such as woodcarving, basket-making, songs, dances, and folklore of the tribe was communicated orally from generation to generation. Among the Nagas, woodcarving communicated the value systems of the tribes, which adorned these morungs. But with the coming of Christianity, an obsolescence with regard to this morung culture set in.

Every Naga tribe expresses a spirited concern for life through their dance, music, song, and folklore in its gennas or festivals. In Naga societies, people who lived on and off the land accumulated some things on the way and one is more ‘successful’ in doing so than another. This in itself does not mean much but when the sharing took place, it does. It is during the “feast of merit” that this status could be enhanced. The “feast of merit” formed an important feature of traditional Naga life. The splendour of Naga culture along with its inborn sense of extravagance was showcased at these functions. So the pastors were successful in erasing the customs of the Feast of Merit and the concept of morung culture, which created a huge setback for artists and sculptors who specialised in decorating them.

Another approach to a work of art is to consider its function or purpose. Probably, vast majorities of works of art were created to serve a definite purpose in a definite place. This statement hardly seems valid to one walking through a museum. A museum, however, is at best an artificial, though necessary, a storehouse of objects taken away from their original place and time; but when each object is traced back to its origin, the reasons for the objects’ creation and forms become clearer. The function of the buildings we usually take for granted. But equally functional objects are pictures, statues, and textiles, as well as much pottery, and metalwork. Because social amnesia has seeped through the last century, it is vital to look at the process of museumisation. So how it is done is very important.

Over the last three decades, there has been a sudden rise in Korean influence among the youth, especially in the North East. The North East has over 220 ethnic groups, each with its own language and rich cultural traditions of dance, songs, festivals, which are more relatable to the South East Asian culture than mainland Indian culture. From physical resemblance, food habits to cultural and traditional knowledge systems, the similarities are aplenty.

The Nagas have come up with all-encompassing traditional festival of all tribes called “Hornbill Festival”, which is orchestrated and managed by the Government. The Nagas say that they are attempting to preserve and display ‘authentic’ Naga culture. Could this be a new future? The idea is that ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ are part and parcel of the surroundings and there is no denying that the two often go hand in hand when discussing the politics of ‘culture’. This particular dimension has become significant in the past few years and the future of these gambits signals the happy commingling of both the local and the global.

For his project, Sayantan Maitra Boka forged interdisciplinary dialogues with art practitioners, curators, historians, and other experts from the field

IFA to Sayantan Maitra Boka: How did your training as an architect inform your installation at the museum?

Sayantan Maitra Boka: Ethnographic museums are currently thriving in North East India, stereotypically portrayed as a tribal region. Each North Eastern state has its own state museum, most of them ethnographically orientated. Further, a large number of private and missionary museums are being set up in addition and competition to this network of government museums. National museums do not just represent the past of the nation; they are involved in the production of history and the imagination of the nation. One aspect which is most visible in ethnographic museums are dioramas which aim to imitate reality – they are not just neutral illustrations. These ‘outdated’ museum layouts are copies of the Western visual practice of ethnographic representation, in which so-called primitive people are firmly rooted in their natural environment. These visual frames form a considerable visual presence in the ethnographic museums of North East India.

My aim was to create an architectural space in the void of the museum, which will not replicate the typical “tribal life” depicted in the dioramas. I wanted to create an experience / journey of Naga spaces. For this, I used the commonly-used materials such as bamboo and ropes. These sustainable building materials are dying, and out of choice, are giving way to concrete and bricks. This is probably the same story for every hill town of North East India. This unchecked “lack of design” and “no planning status” is creating a fragile and uncertain terrain of built forms in these places. Historically, when there was no concept of architectural education or town planning, villages were laid out systematically along with very interesting details of built and unbuilt spaces. As symbolism was an important part of Naga culture, I designed a wall which had information about its meaning and purposes as deciphered by various anthropologists. A film made by artist Mahbubur Rahman, which was our way of following the trail of ethnographer Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf’s journey in Nagaland, was featured as part of this installation.

IFA to Sayantan Maitra Boka: What is the intention and design of your catalogue titled "Cultural Moorings – Notes on Naga Art"?

Sayantan Maitra Boka: The book was conceived and designed to create awareness among the general public and viewer as to how to look at / view and understand anthropological and ethnographic objects in the context of the museum. It talks about Naga art and culture and how it is fused with everyday objects. Because of the non-usability and extinction of certain cultural practices, many of these objects are not in use anymore and are absent from present-day society.

Sayantan Maitra Boka also worked on select architectural elements of the Assam State Museum, to make it a more viewer-friendly space for a lay audience

IFA to Sayantan Maitra Boka: Were you able to involve some members of the Naga community in your project at the museum?

Sayantan Maitra Boka: I have been working in Nagaland and the North East for several years now. I had initiated a public art intervention to create a bridge between artists from North East and the rest of the country. During the process of creating the architecture for the exhibition, three students from the Naga community based in Guwahati helped in building bamboo structures.

The medium of art and cinema would enable the North East to draw itself closer to the world. It would also help in changing perceptions of the North East. People will come to know about the rich cultures, traditions, and various ethnic groups of the North East, their lifestyle, and most importantly the issues of concern which are yet to be addressed to and by the ‘outside world’. Artists in the North East have to acquire a global vision and try and make works that can travel beyond the boundaries of the region. They have to think of themes and styles that will appeal across the country and the world. A new explosion of creativity is what North Eastern visual culture needs today.

IFA to Shubhasree Purkayastha: Describe your project at the Assam State Museum.

Shubhasree Purkayastha: Under the Archival and Museum Fellowships initiative of IFA, I was given a Museum Fellowship to work around the ancient history of Assam (prior to the coming of the Ahom rulers in the 13th century) and focus on the museum collection pertaining to that period.

The history of Assam has mostly been dominated by the Ahom rulers of Mongoloid-origin who arrived in Assam in the 13th century, and ruled for around 800 years. Much remains to be explored in the period prior to the arrival of Ahoms, and a remarkable amount of visual material has been preserved in the Assam State Museum from this time period.

One objective of this project was to explore this material and develop programmes that engage with the same in a more critical manner. The other objective was to make the museum a more open and welcoming space for a varied group of audiences. In smaller cities of India, the culture of visiting museums has not caught on and the role of museums as overall institutions of education is neglected. The fellowship project thus aimed at targeting this problem and developing initiatives accordingly.

Instead of creating just one exhibition at the end of the fellowship period, various outreach initiatives were undertaken during the course of the fellowship, targeting all age-groups and visitor-types.

To begin with a temporary exhibition titled “Mysterious Mothers of the Museum” drawing from the Ambari sculpture collection was held, and was supplemented with outreach programmes for school children, college students, and adults. At the end of the fellowship period, another exhibition titled “Brahmanising the Brahmaputra: The Divine Feminine in Pre-Ahom Assam” was conceived that focussed on an attempt to re-interpret a selection of objects from the museum collection, and put forth an alternative narrative for the ancient history of Assam.

Researcher Shubhasree Purkayastha explored the period prior to the arrival of the Ahom rulers in 13th century Assam, through objects in the Assam State Museum collection

IFA to Shubhasree Purkayastha: What were some of the outreach activities you had planned at the museum?

Shubhasree Purkayastha: In August 2017, two outreach programmes – a workshop for children and a lecture on ancient history of Assam were organised as part of the first exhibition.

The workshop had 20 students from the Parijat Academy, Guwahati (from classes eight and nine) in attendance. The purpose of the workshop, apart from introducing the students to the ongoing exhibition, was to give them a history of the workshop of the mother goddess in India and to facilitate a better, more informed engagement with the museum objects. In addition, I had a presentation about mother goddess worship in India, together with conducting a tour of the exhibition with the children. This was accompanied by gallery activity sheets created specifically for the exhibition to be filled in by the students.

Another outreach activity associated with the exhibition was the lecture delivered by retired bureaucrat and educationist, Mr Kanak Chandra Sharma. His lecture gave an outline of the history of Kamrup from the 5th to the 12th centuries, highlighting the political and commercial importance of the dynasties that ruled Assam, the various contacts it had with the northern mainland, and the artistic, literary and epigraphical achievements of the period. A varied audience, including college students and retired elders, all gathered at the museum to listen to this lecture.

Following the closure of this exhibition, three other programmes were organised at the museum in the month of October 2017. It was conceptualised as a weekend devoted to the museum, and involved three events. The first was a lecture by Mr Rajib Sharma, Founder and Director, Foundation of History and Heritage Studies, Kamakhya Temple Complex. He spoke about the sociocultural context of the Kamakhya temple and associated shrines at the complex, and the lecture was attended by history students and adults alike. The next was a demonstration workshop by the renowned miniaturist of Assam, Mr Mridu Moucham Bora who shared with us the history and techniques of the miniature painting tradition of Assam along with a practical demonstration. The third event was a gallery walkthrough titled “History of Ancient Assam through Ten Objects”, conducted by myself.

Along with organising events within the city of Guwahati, we also collaborated with the Tezpur Museum and the University of Tezpur where I delivered a lecture on the Visual History of India, at the Department of Management and Business Administration, in an attempt to create interdisciplinary awareness and appreciation of history and art.

Desire Machine Collective attempted to create a new discourse around the Assam State Museum and its collection

IFA to Desire Machine Collective: What are some of the objects that you used in the exhibition at the Assam State Museum and how were they given a 'second life'?

Desire Machine Collective: Most objects that we used in the exhibition were in the museum’s storage. The Assam State Museum collection primarily consists of objects collected from what is known as “North East India”, which is a colonial term. Ours was a humble initiative to arrange a new reading for the objects and the collection, which is organised around a colonial notion of the idea of Assam.

IFA to Desire Machine Collective: In your project outline, you talked about bringing back to the public discourse, certain objects and artefacts in order to give them a second life. Can you elaborate on your vision and some of the ideas you had before you set out on this project - especially in facilitating public discussions?

Desire Machine Collective: Decolonising methodologies and decolonisation is less about the method and more about providing space for indigenous people and voices. Decolonised research is not contingent on a given method but always requires honouring the perspectives and interests of the communities and individuals being studied. Public lectures were organised and alternative viewpoints were given space within the public discourse which was missing in the museum context.

The project by Desire Machine Collective aimed to decolonise the cultural memory of the museum and open up the space for popular and indigenous knowledge

IFA to Desire Machine Collective: Why is your project called ‘Museums are Closed at Night’?

Desire Machine Collective: It’s a conceptual framework which would like to take from the innovation of certain methodologies which will respond to decolonised thinking. We agree with historian Dipesh Chakrabarty when he writes in "Museums in Late Democracies" (Humanities Research Vol. IX, No 1, 2002), “By opening out to questions of the embodied and the lived, museums address certain formations of the public in modern democracies that academic disciplines do not address. A democracy needs an informed public along with public debates… In the democracy of the masses and the media, the realms of the embodied are increasingly politically powerful. It is not that the expertise and rationality produced by the traditional academic disciplines are redundant or irrelevant. But their traditional scepticism towards the embodied and the sensory will not help us in understanding why memory and experience — in other words, embodied knowledge — will play as important roles in the politics of democracies as the disembodied knowledge academic disciplines aspire to. Museums, more than archives and history departments, have travelled the distance needed to keep up with changes that mark late democracies.”

Naming the project thus invites the viewpoints of the traditional to living traditions and objects stored in the museum. Literally we would have like to open the museum throughout the night but logistically we failed.

IFA to Desire Machine Collective: What are the popular perceptions and notions around these museum objects – at the Assam State Museum and other museums in the state of Assam?

Desire Machine Collective: All of the museum’s strategies of display involve assumptions, often unacknowledged, about the community the museum is addressing, which is not necessarily (and indeed not usually) coterminous with the community it is representing. Although museums seek to characterise their classification as somehow inherent in the objects they present, it always takes place, at least in the first instance, within some externally constructed discursive field, such as the “nation”, the local “community”, “culture” as opposed to some aspect of the “natural world”, a historical “epoch” or “period”, or the categories of “artistic school” or “style”.

Through their work, Desire Machine Collective reimagined Assam both in its geographical and historical construct, as a link that connects South with South East Asia

IFA to Desire Machine Collective: What is the response you received to the events you organised at the museum?

Desire Machine Collective: It was an overwhelming response which was unexpected. Various suggestions and feedback were received. For us personally it’s a big success, despite various roadblocks. The fellowship was a great motivation to realise this pending project. We acknowledge the support of IFA immensely.

The Archival and Museum Fellowships initiative for the years 2015 to 2018 is supported by Tata Trusts.

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India Foundation for the Arts makes grants to artists, scholars, and institutions through the year. For these exciting projects to take shape, we have to continuously raise funds. We would like to thank our donors who have supported us and made many projects possible in the past few months.

We would especially like to acknowledge support from Aarti Lohia of the Lohia Foundation for support towards The IFA Archive project; Manasi Kirloskar and Vasanthi Sankaranarayanan for donating to our Corpus Fund; Hemandra Kothari Foundation for support towards our programmes; Technicolor India Private Limited for the support of 'Somewhere', an Arts Practice project by game designer Dhruv Jani; and Eicher Motors Limited (Royal Enfield) for commissioning an Arts Services project ‘The Highway Star’ with photographer Ronny Sen, in this period.

You can support and engage with IFA in many ways – by becoming a Friend of IFA or a Donor Patron or even by sponsoring our fundraising events and by spreading the word about IFA. Every contribution counts.

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