Asia Art Archive in India (AAA in India) and Inlaks Foundation are pleased to announce Aravind Chedayan as the grantee for the Inlaks–AAA Art Grant 2025.
This is the fifth grant made possible through the collaboration between AAA in India and Inlaks Foundation. This year’s jury included Delhi-based curator and art historian Latika Gupta, Mumbai-based urbanist and educator Prasad Shetty, and members of AAA in India and Inlaks Foundation. For this edition of the year-long art grant, one proposal was selected after an open call in October 2024.
Aravind’s project for the grant “Kelkkane Kelkkane Ente Lokaru Koottam: Reviving the Sonic and Visual Archive of Kerala’s Nadanpattu” proposes to document Nadanpattu (folk songs) in Kerala, a musical tradition that embodies the collective aspirations of the caste-subaltern communities. Aravind proposes that Nadanpattu, encoded as they are with particular forms of historical experiences and local knowledges, are archival in nature. Nadanpattu signpost historical struggles—as an oral tradition passed down through generations, they exemplify the idea of the body as archive; the songs are recalled on various occasions of resistance by artists, activists, and collectives; and they find themselves accidentally archived across various registers of state-funded programmes.
Largely overlooked by mainstream intellectual discourse, Aravind’s project proposes to build an archive of this tradition as a way to establish its epistemological, aesthetic, and political significance, as well as to activate this tradition “in its capacity to act on the present.” Archiving, therefore, for Aravind, entails translating both the sonic possibilities and visuality of the Nadanpattu—opening up possibilities for transmuting them into resistant forms capable of speaking for new egalitarian and planetary imaginations.
The title of his project, “Kelkkane Kelkkane Ente Lokaru Koottam” (കേൾക്കണേ കേൾക്കണേ എന്റെ ലോകരുകൂട്ടം) translates from the Malayalam as, “Hear ye, Hear ye, My People, Amass.” It is derived from the song “Aanandam Paramanandam,” written by Brahmasree Subhananda Gurudev (1882–1950), the founder of the Atma Bodhodaya Sangham. A subaltern theologian, Gurudev’s song addresses the public at large, simultaneously confronting subjugation and resistance while offering a political and aesthetic framework for egalitarian praxis. It presents a cosmological vision that is both sacred and profane, particular and universal, historical and everyday.
Aravind’s grant commences on 1 January 2025.
Aravind Chedayan is a Delhi-based multidisciplinary artist, folk singer, performer, and photographer. His practice revisits and reimagines the lived realities of subaltern life, weaving together themes of labour, the body, environment, sound, and music. Chedayan’s work delves into the nuanced experiences of marginalised communities, spotlighting their resilience, creativity, and cultural expressions often overlooked in mainstream narratives.
The Inlaks–AAA Art Grant aims to encourage artists and creative practitioners to test new forms of art-making that incorporate research, collaboration, workshops, and formal experiments as a way to examine the technologies and ecosystems of information that shape our times. The grant has been initiated as part of AAA’s ongoing endeavour to support critical approaches and bold thinking around the archive as concept, as medium, and as systems.
External Jury for Inlaks–AAA Art Grant 2025
Latika Gupta completed an MPhil in Visual Studies from JNU and has received fellowships from the India Foundation for the Arts, Nehru Trust, and the Charles Wallace India Trust. She was a research fellow at SOAS University of London in 2017. She was a curator at the NGMA and KHOJ International Artists’ Association, and has curated exhibitions of South Asian and international contemporary art, as well as the permanent exhibition for a museum in Kargil, Ladakh. She has been Co-mentor for the Curatorial Intensive South Asia programme since 2019. From 2016–20, she was Associate Editor at MARG publications. She is a part of the editorial collective of “100 Histories of 100 Worlds in 1 Object” and an Associate Editor of South Asian Studies. She teaches courses on the visual and material cultures of the Himalayas as visiting faculty at Ashoka University, and works as Director, Projects at the Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation.
Prasad Shetty is an urbanist based in Mumbai and a partner at BARDStudio, Mumbai. He is Dean, Professor, and one of the founding members of the School of Environment and Architecture. He is also one of the founding members of the Collective Research Initiative Trust, which has been involved in urban research activities in Mumbai. Prior to this, he worked with several institutions in Mumbai, such as the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority, MMR-Heritage and Conservation Society and MMR-Environment Improvement Society, the Academy of Architecture, and the Kamla Raheja Institute for Architecture. He has also worked as an urban management consultant to the Town Administration of Mendefera, Eritrea, and an expert member to the Dadra–Nagar Haveli Planning & Development Authority. His work involves research and teaching on contemporary Indian urbanism with a specific focus on architecture, cultural aspects of urban economy and property, housing, and entrepreneurial practices. He has a wide range of publications, and has exhibited his works and delivered lectures across the world. He obtained a BArch from KRVIA, Mumbai University, and an MA in Urban Management from the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Supported by Inlaks Foundation
The Inlaks Foundation focuses on providing grants and awards in various fields to outstanding young Indians to develop their professional, scientific, artistic, and cultural abilities.
Asia Art Archive in India (AAA in India) builds resources for research on the region’s dynamic modern and contemporary art scenes by digitising artist and scholarly archives, developing research projects, and organising programmes. AAA in India’s digitised research collections can be accessed from its space in New Delhi, which is open to the public. Since 2023, AAA in India is invested in opening up and activating its Reading Room as a space for discussions, gatherings, and experimentation on and around archives and libraries, inviting artists and other creative practitioners from the region.
Image: ‘Music for Vast Distances’—a performance by Aravind Chedayan & Kaushal Sapre ft. Aasma Tulika on drum machine at Asia Art Archive in India, New Delhi, Oct 2024.