FICA Inlaks Goldsmiths Scholarship 2016-2017 | MEENAKSHI THIRUKODE

FICA, in collaboration with Inlaks, is pleased to announce that Meenakshi Thirukode has been selected as the recipient of the FICA Inlaks Goldsmiths Scholarship 2016 - 2017. 

As the recipient of this scholarship Meenakshi will participate in the one year M.Res. programme in Curatorial/Knowledge course at Goldsmiths, University of London. The programme takes place within the world’s only dedicated PhD programme for advanced contemporary curatorial research. It provides a profound grounding in a variety of relevant theoretical knowledges and offers a unique meeting ground for a network of internationally active curators.

The jury included members of FICA and Inlaks along with Prof. Irit Rogoff and Dr. Stefan Nowotny of the Curatorial/Knowledge Programme at Goldsmiths. The jury was impressed by Meenakshi's focus on questions of "imagination and empathy as ways to re-build conflict/post-conflict spaces" – not only in view of the obvious urgency of these questions, but also because of their carefully considered relation to the curatorial as a mode of contemporary critical knowledge production. Meenakshi's proposal touched on key issues of Curatorial/Knowledge at the conjunction of theory and practice, of art and socio-political concerns.

Meenakshi Thirukode completed her BA in Fine Arts, Stella Maris College for Women, Chennai, and MA in History of the Art Market and Art Criticism, Christie’s Education, New York. She has worked as an arts professional and curator, and has also been actively writing for various magazines and publications. Her curatorial projects include Isha: A Tell-All Tale, a cross platform project that incorporates soap operas, immersive interactive performance and film, at venues across New York; PARLOUR 17, Fragments, Home of Mercedes Duff, New York, USA; Structures within An Intervention, The Guild NY, New York, USA; Whose Territorial Imperative?, The Guild NY, New York, USA; Wonder What The Others Are Upto, Gallery Open Eyed Dreams, Cochin, India. As a writer she has contributed to various artists’ catalogues and Hyperallergic and Asia Art Pacific magazines among others. In the past she has taken on various roles working at organisations such as The Guild Art Gallery, New York; ArtStar.com, Online Art Advisory, New York; New Media Department, Bushwick Film Festival 2013-14; Dakshinachitra Heritage Museum, Chennai, other than co- founding Project For Empty Space (PES), New York. She currently lives in Delhi and works as a Writer, Researcher, Curatorial Director, at Exhibit 320 Gallery and 1After320.
 
The FICA Inlaks Goldsmiths Scholarship is a collaboration that makes available an opportunity for an Indian scholar/curator to participate in the M.Res in Curatorial/Knowledge course at Goldsmiths, University of London. The scholarship supports a potential Indian candidate with an interest in the curatorial both as the practice of exhibition making and putting various things on display, but even more in the curatorial as a system of knowledge production, of the different assemblages of knowledge that curating as a working principle has brought into the field. Inlaks and FICA will together fund the recipient's participation in the M.Res. in Curatorial/Knowledge programme. This includes tuition fees, flight, visa fees and health insurance, stipend for living in London for the one year of the course starting September 2016.