The collaboration between Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation (SSAF) and Asia Art Archive in India emerges from AAA’s ongoing engagement with histories of art writing, and its initiatives to map, compile, translate, and republish texts from various contexts. This grant is in line with SSAF’s commitment to work with cross-disciplinary initiatives addressing the oppressed and the marginalised, and alternative and heterodox practices in the arts and intellectual work.

The Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation was established in 2016 with the mandate to carry forward the legacy of scholar and photographer Umrao Singh Sher-Gil (1870–1954); his daughter and pioneer in modern Indian art, Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–41), and her nephew and niece Vivan Sundaram and Navina Sundaram.

SSAF seeks to enable conjunctions of artistic and cultural practice that deal with historical memory and build expectations for the future. It commits itself to advancing creative independence for art that is founded on freedom of expression, and that is secular and internationalist.

2023

Gorvika Rao

Ambedkarite Delhi: Booklets, Magazines, and the Creation of a Dalit Public Sphere

Gorvika Rao’s project intends to explore Ambedkarite-Buddhist magazines and booklets from the 1970s to the 1990s in Delhi. The Hindi language magazines and booklets under consideration were published by various Ambedkarite and Buddhist organisations, including, prominently, the Buddhist Society of India (Delhi State). The aim of Gorvika’s research is to demonstrate the significant role of Dalit intellectuals in Delhi in creating a robust Dalit counter-public sphere.

2022

C. Yamini Krishna

‘Sabras’—A Glimpse into the Deccani Renaissance

C. Yamini Krishna’s project, proposes to research and document the Urdu magazine Sabras, founded in 1938 by the linguist, historian, and littérateur Syed Mohiuddin Qadri Zore in Hyderabad, India. Krishna aims to digitise the entire collection of Sabras and curate an annotated collection of discussions, essays, and art and illustrations of Dakhaniyat from Sabras, and to host these on a digital interface. Her research will also unearth the role of the Idara-e-Adabiyat-e-Urdu and its contributions to the political and intellectual history of the Deccan.

Haneena P. A. & Jazeela Basheer

Adhunika Vanitha: Revisiting Mappila Women’s Magazines from Early 20th Century Kerala

Haneena P. A. & Jazeela Basheer’s project aims to research and document four women’s magazines from Kerala written in Arabi Malayalam and Malayalam. In the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, print was recognised as a powerful tool by the Mappila Muslims in northern Kerala to propagate socio-religious reforms, including modern education, within their community. The project intends to generate a visual digital archive consisting of the digitised issues of the magazines, a selection of women’s narratives translated into English, and interviews conducted as part of the research. 

2020

Pankti Desai 

Constructing an Alternative Gujarati Cultural Identity: The Case of Re Revolution Little Magazines

Desai's project proposes to research and document the poetics of dissent as expressed through four literary little magazines in Gujarati under the banner of Re Math (or Re Revolution). Published by poet Chinu Modi and others between the 1960s and 1970s, the four magazines under consideration are Re (1961–62), Kruti (1966–72), Unmoolan (1967–68), and Omeesium (1974–76).

2019

Shrujana Niranjani Shridhar

Architects of a Literary Revolution: Unpacking the Connections and Aesthetic of the Dalit Panther and Little Magazine Movements

Shridhar’s project proposes to research and document the intersection between the little magazine movement (1960s–70s) in Maharashtra, and the Dalit Panther movement (1970s–80s) in the same region. This research stems from Shridhar’s work with the Dalit Panther Archive, an independent collective she co-founded in 2016, to document the vibrant history, politics, art, and literature of the Ambedkarite movement in Maharashtra in the 1970s, with a specific focus on the Dalit Panthers.

2018

Koonal Duggal

At the Intersection of Narratology and Visuality: A Case Study of Periodicals from the Communist Movement in Punjab (1960s–1990s)

Duggal’s project proposes to study communist, in particular Naxalite, periodicals from the late 1960s until the movement’s aftermath in the mid-1990s in Punjab. With a focus on the intersection of politics and aesthetics, the magazines this research examines include Rohley Baan (Raging Arrows), Siar (Furrow), and Surkh Rekha (Red Line), all of which featured visuals across several idioms, both on their covers and within their pages.