Emerging Artists Award (EAA+) | Announcing the recipients!
FICA and MMF are excited to announce the new cohort for the Emerging Artists Award (EAA+), bringing together a wide and rich variety of practices, enquiries and endeavours.
Since 2022, the EAA platform has been reimagined as a collective forum, encouraging, mentoring and supporting 10 artists from India. EAA+ will offer each of the selected artists a financial grant as well as a residency, and participation in an exhibitory component, post the grant period.
The orientation of the EAA+ forum remains directed towards encouraging a mode of thinking geared towards fostering communities and collectivities between artists, and between artists and art organisations in India, to help us better visualise the potencies of peer-led networks.
This year, we are thrilled to be supporting the stellar practices and pursuits of artists Ashis Dhali, Ashis Kumar Palei, Bhikari Pradhan, Kiran Mungekar, Partha Banik, Rahee Punyashloka, Richa Arya, Ritika Sharma, Soumava Das, and Vipin Dhanurdharan, through the aegis of EAA+.
Our esteemed jury consisted of artists Rakhi Peswani, Jeebesh Bagchi, Varunika Saraf and Susanta Mandal as well as curator and researcher Bhooma Padmanabhan as the MMF representative, along with Vidya Shivadas, director at FICA.
We received over 350 applications this year, showcasing a remarkable diversity of practices, critical inquiries, and experimental approaches across a wide range of disciplines and genres in art. The jury, in their reflections, took time to consider how artistic practices today intersect across mediums, contexts, and collaborative formats. As part of the jury process, they closely examined how the selected cohort could actively engage with the EAA+ platform, acknowledging the marginalities and fissures that can dialogue and intersect in multiple ways. The jury also considered the contingencies shaping our present moment and how these are being addressed and highlighted within the scope of contemporary art. This cohort brings together varied strengths, narratives, and contexts from across the country, and the EAA+ platform looks forward to exploring the possibilities these connections may inspire, fostering exchanges among people and practices while recognizing their shared, synergistic, and divergent elements.
We wish our grantees all the very best for their endeavours, and look forward to an exciting year ahead with them!
The Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation (MMF) was established in December 2015 in accordance with the vision of the artist Mrinalini Mukherjee, to carry forth the legacy of the Mukherjee family which include her parents, the critically acclaimed modernist Benode Behari Mukherjee and artist-educator Leela Mukherjee. While the Foundation's primary aim is to preserve and promote the legacy of this unique family through exhibitions, archiving, research initiatives, publications and films, it will fulfill its charitable purposes by extending its resources to art practitioners, students, educators, and art institutions through its various grant-making and collaborative initiatives. In the long term the Foundation looks to encourage and augment a range of programmes, practices and processes to sustain and nurture Indian art in the country and on the international stage.