Asia Art Archive and Inlaks India Foundation are pleased to announce Sharmistha Saha as the grantee for the AAA–Inlaks Art Grant 2017–18.
Made possible through the collaboration between Asia Art Archive in India and Inlaks India Foundation, the jury selected one proposal for the year-long grant after the open call in June–July 2017. The jury this year included the Mumbai-based collaborative studio CAMP and the Delhi-based art theorist and educator Santhosh S., along with members of Asia Art Archive and Inlaks. Saha’s grant will begin on 1 September 2017.
Sharmistha Saha is a theatre practitioner and researcher based in Mumbai. She studied theatre at Freie Universität Berlin, and at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has worked at Odin Teatret, Denmark, with theatre director Eugenio Barba and his team; and her latest production, Her Letters, was funded by The Tagore Centre, Berlin. Currently, Saha is a faculty member at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.
Saha’s project for the grant, Act… Now Re-enact!, engages with late nineteenth century 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 being formed (and performed) in the erstwhile Bengal and Bombay Presidency. Through workshops, rehearsals, and performance scores that Saha will be developing in collaboration with Marathi playwright and scholar Ashutosh Potdar, the project will deploy contemporary theatre and experimental performance to re-imagine and re-situate the archive in the present moment. Act… Now Re-enact! will bring together students, scholars, theatre practitioners, and artists to re-enact archival material, exploring new forms of dramaturgical mediation.
The AAA–Inlaks 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 endeavor to support critical approaches and bold thinking around the archive as concept, as medium, and as systems.
Jury for AAA–Inlaks Art Grant 2017–18
CAMP is a collaborative studio based in Chuim Village, Mumbai, since 2007. Their practice spans video and film, electronic media, and public art forms that show how deep technical experimentation and artistic form can meet. Over the years they have been hosts and co-initiators of public initiatives such as the online open-access archives Pad.ma and Indiancine.ma, and the Mankhurd community space R and R.
Santhosh S. is Assistant Professor, School of Culture and Creative Expressions, Ambedkar University Delhi. His work is in the field of critical historiography of Indian art historical studies and cultural practices in relation to minoritarian politics.
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.
Supported by The Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation
