Announcing the recipients!
The Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art, in partnership with Royal Enfield, is excited to announce the recipients of the inaugural edition of the Himalayan Fellowship for Creative Practitioners. This unique fellowship program, launched as a new initiative for the Himalayan belt, aims to support and empower creative practitioners — individuals and collectives — working at the intersection of ecology and cultural knowledge in the Western and Eastern Himalayan regions (namely Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura, Assam and West Bengal).
To read more about the scope of the Fellowship, click here.
The jury process for the Fellowship included a two-tiered shortlisting process as well as an interview round. The six-member jury included Parismita Singh, graphic novelist and writer from Assam; Benil Biswas, educator and scholar of theater and performances studies with a special focus on the Northeastern region; Latika Gupta, curator and scholar of Trans-Himalayan art and rituals; Mary Therese Kurkalang, cultural curator and social researcher from Shillong; and, Monisha Ahmed, Co-founder and Executive Director of Ladakh Arts and Media Organisation (LAMO) and an expert of Ladakhi material and visual culture; and Vidya Shivadas, curator and Director, FICA.
The year-long Fellowship will support selected projects with a grant amount of up to 3 Lakh each towards the development of their projects, building a structured programme entailing components of mentorship and interactive sessions with resource persons, workshops and an exhibition platform.
About the recipients:
BERE Collective is a group of eco-conscious artists (Bedanto Boro, Jibanbrata Narzary, Maosuma Basumatary and Simang Kr. Brahma) from the Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR). The collective seeks to address the negative impact of irresponsible tourist activities in the Baokhunguri biosphere and the Dhir beel catchment area of the Chakrashila Wildlife Sanctuary. Through public art installations and collaborative methods, they intend to raise awareness about the effects of pollution on the ecosystem.
Kunga Tashi Lepcha is an independent photographer based out of Sikkim. He is the co-founder of The Confluence Collective, a collective of photographers and researchers working together to create a common platform for sharing visual and oral stories of the Sikkim-Darjeeling Himalayas.
Moranngam Khaling or 'Mo Naga' is an artist from Manipur, working on the revival and preservation of traditional tattoos in North East India, emphasising their deep connection to cultural identity, signifying aspects like gender, clan, tribe, status, and achievements, often linked to rites of passage. Recognizing the urgency of raising awareness and preserving the remnants of this culture, his study extends beyond tattoos to encompass folklore, tales, songs, handicrafts, spiritual practices, rituals, local flora, and fauna.
Tsering Motup Siddho is a multidisciplinary artist based in Leh-Ladakh. With a post-graduation from Shiv Nadar University, Delhi, he explores various artistic forms, including video installations, photography, drawing, and painting. Motup's art often explores concepts like stereotypes, memory, home, migration, nationalism, patriotism, borders, and their impact on Ladakh's individuals through material culture, language, performance, and cultural practices.
Ishan Chrungoo is a Kashmir-born new media artist now based in Dharamshala, who works across genres in technology, art, and community engagement. He endeavors to challenge the traditional paradigms of documentation with a traveling selfie photo booth that will offer a transient and fun space for communities to co-create, express, and immerse in their narratives in real time.
Joshua Sailo is a Bangalore-based artist originally from Mizoram. He transforms his experiences into artistic expressions through dance, music, photography, and visual art. He is a co-founding member of the 206 Dance Collective and engages with the global dance community through teaching, performances, and podcasting.
Soujanyaa Boruah and Shyam Lal are a duo working to document the Gaddi community's culture and resilience. Together, they work to bridge cultural and ecological gaps in the region. Shyam is a former Himalayan shepherd turned mountaineer, who aims to preserve indigenous practices in the face of changing Himalayan landscapes. Soujanyaa, a designer, specializes in knowledge ecosystems, participatory research, and conservation awareness in Dharamshala.
Millo Ankha is a former dentist turned poet, artist and a storyteller. She belongs to the Indigenous Apatani community from Ziro, Arunachal Pradesh, India. She primarily works with photography, texts, oral literature, and performance. Her work explores themes of gender, nature and indigenous worldview.
The ShikarGah Collective is a collaborative initiative by artists Khursheed Ahmad and Janees Ahmad Lanker, conceptualised as a collective that aims to stage Kashmir’s performing art practices, namely the Bhand Pather and to unify artists from different backgrounds. Khursheed is a visual artist and researcher from Wathura village in Budgam district, hails from the Bhand Pather community. Janees is a theater practitioner, facilitator, and researcher from Srinagar, Kashmir, and has been involved in activist and feminist theatre for the past seven years.
Aarti Bisht, Aastha, Rajendra Singh Negi & Ravindra Singh Gusain are part of a community radio project, Radio Henvalvani, that is dedicated to addressing environmental challenges in the Garhwal region. The team hopes to work with poets from the region to harness the ongoing discourse surrounding climate change and human-induced disasters via the democratic space of the radio.
To listen to the fellows talk about their projects, listen to the playlist below or click here.
As a platform encouraging innovative and experimental approaches to artmaking, this Fellowship seeks to spotlight issues related to ecology and intangible cultural heritage, forming closer associations and deep understanding of local cultural and natural resources. Having selected the program’s first cohort of 10 creative practitioners, we hope to facilitate a free-flowing exchange of ideas and practices between artists, resource persons, conservationists and communities over the coming year, in order to foster, build and strengthen collaborations, marking a greater investment in the conservation and preservation of resources in and across the Himalayas.
The Fellows’ Meet in Tezpur, Assam | October 2023
We kickstarted the Fellowship process with immense excitement and with a very fruitful week-long Fellows’ Meet, hosted at GreenHub in Tezpur, Assam from 8 - 15th October 2023. We are very grateful to our institutional partner, GreenHub for hosting us so graciously and to the entire team for opening up their resources and spaces for us to work with and unwind in.
We are also very thankful to our Fellowship Consultants Dr Monisha Ahmed and Mary Therese Kurkalang for their expertise, time and enthusiasm that added greatly to each of our sessions in Tezpur. We were very pleased to be able to welcome graphic novelist, writer and THF jury member Parismita Singh as well as Dr Kaustabh Deka, professor at Dibrugarh University to the Fellows’ Meet as key resource persons who helped us unpack several ideas around working in and with the region, its landscape, cultures and ecologies as well as larger questions around representation and processes of making.
The Fellows' Meet was a way for us to listen and be part of some very stimulating conversations. It allowed us to gain valuable insights into the unique challenges and opportunities that creative practitioners face in the Himalayan belt, and it was a crucial step in building a strong foundation for our year-long journey with our talented recipients. It led to the formation of new tangents, the forging new familiarities and bonds through hours of conversation and sharing. We were very glad to have been able to bring together 8 of the 10 supported projects as part of the Fellows’ Meet in Tezpur. Each of these 8 recipients worked on presentations at their end which became critical entry points for all of us into each of their practices and pursuits, while also charting their plans for the year ahead.
The Fellows’ Meet also brought us insights and perspectives into alternate histories of the state, written from the margins and also by feminist voices such as those at the helm of the Tezpur Mahila Samiti. We were also able to listen into Green Hub’s own initiatives in the region, their unwavering focus on foregrounding the environment through the lens of the documentary, and their deep engagement with various communities and ideas of conservation. We are grateful to Debashish Nandi, leading the River Project, for sharing his work with us; and to Sumit Sisodiya, the technical head at Green Hub, for breaking down with such simplicity what it means to think with processes of documenting, editing, archiving and storing, both at an individual and an institutional level. We were also taken through a key part of Tezpur’s history with Jeeb Das, a local historian and storyteller whose historic house remains even to this day a site of gathering at the banks of the Brahmaputra.
A wonderful learning experience, the Fellows’ Meet marks an important milestone for us with the Himalayan Fellowship for Creative Practitioners. We look forward to being able to take forward many of our freshly forged relationships, the rich discussions and dialogues as well as the imminent and very welcome possibility of new nodes in a vast, growing network across this incredible region.
About our collaborators:
The oldest motorcycle brand in continuous production, Royal Enfield has created beautifully crafted motorcycles since 1901. Paying tribute to the Himalayas, which Royal Enfield has always called as its ‘spiritual home’, the brand is looking to partner 100 Himalayan communities by 2030, with the objective to build resilience in the face of climate change. Alongside, Royal Enfield will encourage one million riders globally to join a movement of driving deep, long-lasting and systemic change in how humans and nature interact and thrive. This commitment is exemplified by the unique partnership with UNESCO, where riders explore the Himalayas, documenting and promoting the rich Intangible Cultural Heritage of local communities. Currently, Royal Enfield supports more than 40 projects across the Indian Himalayan region and is expanding its initiatives.
Fellowship Consultants
Dr Monisha Ahmed is the Co-founder and Executive Director of Ladakh Arts and Media Organisation, Leh. She is an independent researcher, writer and curator whose work focuses on art practices and material culture in Ladakh, as well as other areas of the Himalayan world. Her doctoral degree from Oxford University developed into the book Living Fabric: Weaving among the Nomads of Ladakh Himalaya (2002), and received the Textile Society of America’s R L Shep award in 2003 for best book in the field of ethnic textile studies. She has co-edited Ladakh – Culture at the Crossroads (2005), and collaborated on Pashmina – The Kashmir Shawl and Beyond (2009 and 2017), and published several articles on textile arts of the Himalayan Buddhist world, as well as other parts of India, including four in The Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion (2010), a chapter for The Arts and Interiors of Rashtrapati Bhavan – Lutyens and Beyond (2016), and the catalogue Woven Treasures – Textiles from the Jasleen Dhamija Collection (2016). More recently she was advisor for the Bhau Daji Lad Museum’s online exhibit We wear Culture for the Google Cultural Institute. She has curated exhibitions ‘thread by thread’ (2015), ‘Between Land and Sky – Woven Gold from the Gyaser Tradition’ (2019) and ‘Classic Miniature Costumes: 1850 to 1950’ (2019). From 2010 to 2016 she was Associate Editor of Marg Publications.
Mary Therese Kurkalang is a cultural curator and social researcher with three decades of experience working in publishing, art & culture and the social sector; across India and internationally. An independent consultant since 2012, she has worked intensely in each of the North eastern states of India on social research, creative practices and peace & conflict dialogue forums. Since 2010, she has been part of various advisory boards on Culture, Art, Literature and the Social Sector. A certified Art Management Trainer, she regularly conducts training sessions and lectures on literature, culture, tribal identity and politics. In 2022 she co-curated a programme and exhibition focussing on the Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Himalayan Region in a partnership with Royal Enfield and UNESCO. She is the Creative Director of the Shillong Literary Festival editions 2021 and 2022. She is the co-founder of the Rachna Books Writers Residency launched in 2023.
Institutional Partners
The Ladakh Arts and Media Organisation (LAMO) based in Leh was established in 1996 to articulate an alternative vision for the arts and media in Ladakh. Located on the hill below the 17th century Leh palace, LAMO is housed in two historical structures that have been restored and converted into an arts space with galleries, offices, library and open-air performance site where lectures, film screenings, research and documentation projects, workshops and exhibitions about Ladakh’s material and visual culture, performing arts and literature are held regularly.
Green Hub, Tezpur is a youth and community based video fellowship programme that engages and empowers young people in conservation education, action, climate sustainability and social change through the visual medium; and creating a digital resource bank for wildlife, environment and indigenous knowledge. The fellowships are open to youth in the northeast and in the central regions of India. The Fellowship involves learning technical aspects of filming, editing, and storytelling; bringing to life untold stories of the land, people and generational knowledge. Representing remote tribal areas, marginalized communities as well as urban spaces - the Green Hub Fellows are envisioned to be catalysts of positive change, amplifying the idea of ecological security as the bedrock of a sustainable future.