The AAA–Inlaks Art Grant is dedicated to supporting innovative approaches to practising art today. The grant encourages artists to propose and test new forms of art-making that incorporate research, collaboration, workshops, and formal experiments to examine the technologies and ecosystems of information that shape our times.
The Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation was established by Indoo Shivdasani in 1976 as a permanent platform for his philanthropic activities. The foundation focuses on providing scholarships, grants, and awards in any field to outstanding young Indians to develop their professional, scientific, artistic, and cultural abilities.
The Art Grantees
2023-24
Shaheen Ahmed
Between Ruhānī and Jismānī: Living, Sensorial Archives of Lakshadweep Islands
Ahmed’s project for the grant will explore aspects of the Sufi cosmos and spiritual imagination in the region’s collective memory, rendered through a series of experimental docufiction films. Working collaboratively with writers, researchers, collectors, and collectives from the islands, the project will map and locate the “imaginal” pasts of the islanders that persist as living, sensorial archives, in the form of oral traditions, Sufi rituals, and performative practices.
2022
Sudha Padmaja Francis
Cook-Booking through a History of Baking in the Malabar
Sudha Padmaja Francis’s research project explores questions of caste, class, and gender through the lens of food. She proposes to produce an archive and non-fiction film on the history of culture and labour in small bakeries located in northern Kerala.
2020
Avik Debdas
Avik Debdas’s project undertakes a creative investigation of the genealogies of Tis Hazari, a locality in Old Delhi. Taking as its starting point two anecdotes about how Tis Hazari derived its name—literally meaning “of thirty thousand”, his project will delve deep into archives to not only examine the veracity of such claims about Tis Hazari and the “missing garden,” but also to trace a speculative genealogy of the neem tree.
2017–18
Sharmistha Saha
Act… Now Re-enact!
Sharmistha Saha’s project engages with late nineteenth and early twentieth century archives of Bengali and Marathi theatre. Drawing on ideas and practices that shaped modern theatre, theatre production, and acting techniques, her project will explore how new collective identities were formed (and performed) in the erstwhile Bengal and Bombay Presidency.
