Grant & Projects

Ishan Hendre


Project Period: Three months

For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Neighbourhood Engagements, which will create a series of video vignettes capturing stories of the gold and silver crafting community in Cubbonpete and Anchepete.  The project will document the diversity of the industry, its community and the changing dynamics of the pete. The outcome of this project will be the video vignettes, which will be shared with the community through a series of art interventions. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA along with the final report will be process documentation of research and interactions, photographs and video vignettes, and documentation of the final sharing. Project funds will pay for exhibition cost, equipment rental, honorarium, printing and stationery, travel.

Mehar Zariwala


Project Period: Three months

For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Neighbourhood Engagements, which will create a series of zines that documents the history and lived experiences of residents of Rustum Bagh. Through detailed research and conversations with residents, as well as members of the Kothavala family, the project will culminate in a zine-making workshop with young residents to bring alive the stories of the neighbourhood. The outcome of this project will be an exhibition of the zine series in the neighbourhood. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be process documentation of research and interactions, images from the zines and documentation of the exhibition. Project funds will pay for workshop costs, equipment hire, printing and publication, and exhibition. 

Suvani Suri


Project Period: Eight months

For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Explorations, which will examine the anatomy of a collective song We shall Overcome and its various iterations across time, geography, language and political context. This will be done by aggregating a vast array of data about its musicality, structure, popularity maps, analytics, and audience interactions such as YouTube comments. The envisioned outcome may start to take shape only as the project progresses and may be an intermedia work. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be the process documentation and the intermedia work. Project funds will pay for professional fees, honorarium, printing, studio hire, books, web hosting and online subscriptions.

Srishti Lakhera


Project Period: Eight months

For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Explorations, which will situate the Yarshagumba, a medicinal mushroom in the upper Himalayas, as a nodal point to study the shifts in narratives of the pastoral Rung community as they move between one world with digital networks and another with oral traditions and myths, while harvesting this precious herbal produce used in Chinese medicine. The outcome of the project will be a script, a storyboard and a pitch trailer for a film. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be the script, storyboard and the pitch trailer. Project funds will pay for travel and living, honorarium, equipment hire and professional fees.

Rukhsana Nazeen


Project Period: Eight months

For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Explorations, which will creatively express the experiences of the everyday impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bidar through a series of Afsaanche—very short, paragraph-length stories in Urdu—and its digital exploration in the audio format of the podcast. As a literary form that emerged as a response to the short attention span caused by the internet, the Afsaanche in this project will aim to mark both the humanitarian actions as well as the disruptions of daily life during the pandemic. The outcome of the project will be the series of Afsaanche and the podcasts. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be the series of Afsaanche and the audio files of the podcasts. Project funds will pay for honorarium, professional fees, and website domain and hosting.

Prantik Narayan Basu


Project Period: Eight months

For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Explorations, which will critically examine the conflicting emotions of pleasure and guilt in the context of self-awakening as a homosexual, and investigate the ethical representation of love and sexuality on screen with the help of intimacy experts. Critiquing the lack of sex education, the project will also trace the challenges of growing up as a homosexual person in India. The outcome of the project will be the script for a short film. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be the script of the short film, and process documentation. Project funds will pay for professional fees, honorarium and travel.

Nihaal Faizel


Project Period: Eight months

For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Explorations, which will engage with three popular children’s television shows from the late 1990s, as cultural documents in media that trace shifts in our lives in post-liberalisation India. Through this endeavour the project will reflect on the larger processes of urbanisation, globalisation, and representation in neo-liberal times. The outcome of the project will be drawings on ‘magic slates’. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be a documentation of the drawings. Project funds will pay for materials, purchase of books and honorarium.

Mohit Prakash Shelare


Project Period: Eight months

For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Explorations, which will examine how the trauma of seeing violent imagery online including on social media can be sublimated through drawing by hand. As a critique of the desensitisation caused by the incessant consumption of online images including those of violence, the project will explore how the aspects of materiality and time in drawing these images by hand transform their resonance and politics. The outcomes of the project will be a series of drawings and lecture performances. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be a documentation of the drawings and lecture performances, along with screen recordings and videos created during the process. Project funds will pay for materials, consumables, professional fees, software subscriptions and honorarium.

Birender Kumar Yadav


Project Period: Eight months

For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Explorations, which will examine the lives and working conditions of migrant labourers of the brick kilns of Mirzapur through artistic collaboration with them. Through research and documentation the project will trace ironies in relationships between labour and development, such as women bearing the heavy load of bricks branded Durga, the Goddess often associated with women’s empowerment. The outcomes of the project will be a series of drawings, terracotta sculptures, photographs and a video documentary. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be documentation of the drawings and terracotta sculptures, as well as copies of the photographs and the documentary. Project funds will pay for materials, honorarium, professional fees, travel and living, and printing.

Andrew Prashanth


Project Period: Eight months

For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Explorations, which will experiment to create a form for Asunam, a non-Vedic mythical creature from Sangam Literature of the classical Tamil oeuvre. In a collaborative artistic process between a comics writer, an illustrator and a voice-over artist, this project will use motion and sound to imagine this mythical creature with surreal physical features and hypersensitivity to sound. The outcome of the project will be an audio-visual and a motion comic. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be process documentation of the collaboration, the audio-visual and the motion comic.  Project funds will pay for professional fees and honorarium.

Anishaa Tavag


Project Period: Eight months

For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Explorations, which will be a collaboration between four contemporary dancers, rethinking and re-embodying ideas of community and co-work through a series of weekly or bi-weekly shared journeys. These four dancers, who are teacher-trainees of the Alexander technique, will examine ways to unite their solo investigations into a sustainable collective practice, focussing on process instead of production. The outcome of the project will be the process documentation and a collective journal in physical, digital or hybrid form. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be this process documentation, including those of the interactive open studio improvs and a collective journal in physical, digital or hybrid form. Project funds will pay for professional fees, space hire, honorarium, equipment hire and online subscriptions.  

Aranya Sengupta


Project Period: One year and six months

For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Productions, to create a series of artist books that investigate the history and evolution of printmaking technologies in Bengal. Focussed on five milestone methods of printmaking namely woodcut, block, offset, serigraph and digital technologies, the project will experiment with media, methods and book design formats to trace the history of printmaking to create new relationships between the reader and the book. The outcome of this project will be the series of five artist books, detailed process documentation and a physical and virtual exhibition on the evolution of print-technology in India.  The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be the artist books, video documentation of the process, a download of the website containing the virtual exhibition along with the URL, and still and video documentation of the physical exhibition. Project funds will pay for professional fees, documentation, materials, transport, website creation and virtual exhibition, purchase of equipment (the scanner will be returned to IFA), physical exhibition and publicity.

Anisha Baid


Project Period: One year and six months

For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Productions, to create a video game that investigates expressions of corporate culture and gendered labour as manifested on the computer interface. Created in the genre of a Fumblecore game, this project will explore the meaning of labour on the computer and create ways of subverting the hegemonic and gendered bodily relationships with the machine. The outcome of this project will be an online as well as a physical iteration of a Fumblecore game. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be a download of the website comprising the game along with the URL, the process documentation of creating the game, and still and video documentation of the physical installation. Project funds will pay for professional fees, honorarium, physical installation of the game and purchase of software.

Tarun Bhartiya


Project Period: One year and six months

For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Productions, to create a series of photographs that examine notions of identity and contestations around questions of faith and nation-building among the Niam Khasi people. Through detailed field research, the project will problematise the monochromatic, linear narratives about the history of faith in Meghalaya, offering nuanced understandings of historical and contemporary debates within Meghalaya and in the Indian geopolitical context. The outcomes of this project will be a series of photographs, a set of picture postcards, a book and an exhibition. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be the photographs, the picture postcards, the book, and still and video documentation of the exhibition. Project funds will pay for honorarium, travel and living, book design and production, professional fees, venue hire, printing and the exhibition.

Masoom Parmar


Project Period: Ten months

For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Productions, to create a performance that seeks to reinvent Bharatanatyam by bringing in values of pluralism. Based on the lived experiences of a non-binary, Muslim Zoroastrian dancer practising the Hindu temple dance form, the performance will be centred on the Alarippu—the traditional Bharatanatyam dance sequence—reimagining the form through layered movement, sound influences from Islam, and lyrics from Bhakti and Sufi traditions. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be audio recordings of interviews and still and video documentation of the process and the final production. Project funds will pay for professional fees, honorarium, equipment hire, venue hire and studio hire.

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