Emerging Artists Award (EAA+) 2026 Recipients
FICA and MMF are excited to announce the new cohort for the Emerging Artists Award (EAA+) 2026, bringing together a diverse range of practices, interests and inquiries.
Since 2022, the EAA platform has been reimagined as a collective forum, encouraging, mentoring, supporting 10 artists from India. EAA+ will offer each of the selected artists a financial grant as well as a residency, and participation in a residency component, post the grant period.
The orientation of the EAA+ forum remains 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 Anurag Singraur, Aravind Chedayan, Boris Colin Alphonse, Farhin Afza, Fileona Dkhar, Kumar Misal, Sheshadev Sagria, Shiv Shankar, Stuti Bansal and Vanshika Babbar, under the aegis of EAA+.
Our esteemed jury consisted of curator and writer Arushi Vats, artists Mochu and Gagan Singh, along with curator and researcher Bhooma Padmanabhan as the MMF representative and Vidya Shivadas, director at FICA.
We received over 470 applications this year, demonstrating the range of contexts, urgencies, critical inquiries as well as material and thematic engagements that prevail in the contemporary moment. Our jury shared reflections from their process, noting the diverse approaches as well as locations from which practices were being made and articulated, while appreciating the freedom, experimentation and innovative approaches to thinking with categories and forms. The jury recognised a tendency towards intermediality, research and participatory modes that emerged from the portfolios received this time. In their process, they also considered the ways the practices within the cohort would intersect with and energise each other. This year’s cohort brings together varied interests and explorations from across the country, and the EAA+ platform looks forward to the many possibilities and cross exchanges this will engender across convergent and distinctive articulations between our grantees.
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.