Art > AAA artist grant

Asia Art Archive in India and Inlaks India Foundation are pleased to announce the open call for AAA–Inlaks Art Grant 2023, dedicated to supporting experimental approaches in art practice today.

Applications Closed

The grant will encourage artists to propose methods of art-making that incorporate research, collaboration, workshops, and formal experiments to explore the imaginations, architectures, sensoria, and interfaces of the archive.
This open call seeks proposals that demonstrate a critical and imaginative approach toward the archive as concept, system, and medium. This grant asks artists to consider: What shall we do with the archive?

Candidates are invited to propose projects that engage with any of the following:
• Archives pertaining to any field: such as art, music, cinema, theatre, law, science, medicine, etc.
• Artists’ personal archives: scrapbooks, letters, diaries, photo albums, etc.
• Public libraries, databases, inventories
• Anthologies, timelines, maps, and bibliographies

Grantees will not be expected to submit a completed work at the end of the programme. Applications will be assessed on the basis of clarity and rigour. Proposals that extend ongoing projects are eligible for this grant.

 

Eligibility
Artists of Indian citizenship, who are currently residing in India, and between the ages of 25 to 35. Collectives are eligible to apply provided all members are Indian citizens under 35 years old.

Past Inlaks grantees (including recipients of other Inlaks grants, awards, or residencies) are not eligible to apply.

 

Duration of Grant
15 December 2023 to 14 December 2024

 

Grant Amount
Up to INR 2,00,000

 

Selection Process
Five candidates will be shortlisted for interview. Interviews will be conducted online during the end of November 2023. One grantee will be selected from among those interviewed by a panel consisting of one member from Inlaks and one member from AAA in India. The selected grantee will be contacted by 6 December 2023.

 

Application Requirements
A completed application form

The form consists of two sections:
1. Applicant and Referee Details
2. Project Details where a single PDF file (not exceeding 25MB) can be uploaded, consisting of:
a) Artist statement describing your practice and areas of interest (up to 500 words)
b) Portfolio of three-to-five of your most recent projects. Audio-video files can be linked to YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud, etc.
c) Two-page CV
d) Project proposal (up to 1500 words) that includes:
(i) a short description of the intended/ongoing project, and your research responding to any of the themes listed in this open call;
(ii) a timeline for the project’s different stages and potential platforms;
(iii) a budget of estimated costs for your project based on your proposal and timeline; and
(iv) archives/collections/individuals you intend to access/visit.
The proposal does not have to be definitive and can change during the course of the one-year period of this grant, in consultation with AAA & Inlaks representatives.

 

Asia Art Archive in India (AAA-I) is an Independent Registered Public Charitable Trust established in 2013 with the goal of building resources for research on the region’s dynamic contemporary art scene. It accomplishes this mission by digitising artist and scholarly archives, developing research projects, and organising programmes. AAA-I’s Research Collections can be accessed from its space in New Delhi, which has been open to the public since 2016.

Banner Image: Thank You Card” by Norberto Roldan, 1999. Courtesy of Green Papaya Art Projects, Asia Art Archive.

 

Recipient

2023

  • Shaheen Ahmed

Shaheen Ahmed is a filmmaker from the Malabar Coast of Kerala. He was previously a multimedia producer at The Caravan Magazine in New Delhi. His work spans intimate portrait films, experimental essays, and engages thoughts on memory and identity. He is currently developing experimental art projects based on the cultural heritage of the Malabar Coast and Lakshadweep Islands. He is a graduate of the DocNomads documentary filmmaking programme based in Lisbon, Budapest, and Brussels.

Ahmed’s project for the grant, Between Ruhānī and Jismānī: Living, Sensorial Archives of Lakshadweep Islands will explore aspects of the Sufi cosmos and spiritual imagination in the region’s collective memory, rendered through a series of experimental docufiction films.

2022

  • Sudha Padmaja Francis

Sudha Padmaja Francis’ project for the grant, Cook-Booking through a History of Baking in the Malabar, proposes to produce an archive around the history of culture and labour in bakeries associated with the OBC communities in northern Kerala.

Sudha is a filmmaker/visual artist from Kerala, India. She graduated with a Masters in Creative Enterprise (Film) from the University of Reading, UK in September 2017. She is a recipient of the Felix scholarship for 2016-2017. She completed her first short film in Malayalam titled Eye Test in August 2017, which was her graduation dissertation film at Reading. Eye Test won the National Film Award for Best Cinematography in 2017, and was screened at several international film festivals. Francis made a 26 minute documentary film with the help of a PSBT-Doordarshan Fellowship titled Ormajeevikal (Memory Beings) based on the subaltern musical realm in North Kerala. It was screened at various international film festivals and was shortlisted for the Toto Funds the Arts Award 2020. She completed a documentary on weaving cooperative societies in Kerala with the Sahapedia Early Career Filmmaking Grant she had secured in 2020. Her video series on life during the pandemic and lockdown was shown at various places including the Argentinian Bienale ‘Bienal Sur’. Her recent video essay Walkway was shown at the Oberhausen Film Festival 2022.

2020

  • Avik Debdas

Avik Debdas’s project for the grant, The Taste of Bitter Time, proposed to undertake a creative investigation of the genealogies of Tis Hazari, a locality in Old Delhi.

2017

  • Sharmistha Saha

Sharmistha Saha’s project for the grant, Act… Now Re-enact!, engaged with late nineteenth century and early twentieth century archives of Bengali and Marathi theatre.

 

Website: http://www.aaa.org.hk/en

COPYRIGHT © 2017. INLAKS SHIVDASANI FOUNDATION. JOMEL & ZOYA KATHAWALA