Mrinalini Mukherjee Creative Arts Grant 2022 - 2023: Announcing Grantees for the 2022-23 Grant
The Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation is pleased to announce the result of the Mrinalini Mukherjee Creative Arts Grant (MMCAG). This is the inaugural year of the annual grant that is aimed at supporting the work of an Indian artist/collective who has shown consistent engagement with shifting contexts within contemporary art, and is looking to experiment and push their practice beyond the familiar. The grant will support them as they explore fresh ideas and develop a new body of work that allows them to continue contributing to the field of visual arts with greater creative, technical and intellectual proficiency.
The jury consisting of Nancy Adajania, Ranbir Kaleka and Gulammohammed Sheikh, have chosen to award the grant to two artists this year. The jury found their projects to be deeply engaging with pertinent social questions, while also seeking to explore the boundaries of their own artistic oeuvre and speak to new audiences. As the first year of the grant, the jury have been cognizant of the kinds of practices and forms of artistic enquiries that could benefit from a grant such as the MMCAG, and have chosen to support projects with artistic positions that are off-center and boldly experimental. The jury’s choice has also been determined by the potential for the grant to bolster artists who seek greater pedagogical and peer-to-peer learning opportunities, and are willing to use this project as a way to critically re-examine their practice.
Shefalee Jain
New Delhi based artist, educator and illustrator Shefalee Jain received her bachelors (2001–2005) and masters (2005–2007) degree from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Vadodara. She holds a practice-based PhD in Visual Art from Ambedkar University, New Delhi where she taught as Assistant Professor of Visual Art at the School of Culture and Creative Expressions (2012–2022). Shefalee is the co-founder of BlueJackal, a platform for engaging with and creating visual narratives, comics, picture books and initiating dialogue and learning in this context through interactive programs. She is also co-founder and co-editor of the zine Drawing Resistance. She has published her illustrations and writing with Muskaan (Bhopal), Eklavya (Bhopal), DC books (Kottayam), BlueJackal(Delhi/Pune) and Tulika (Chennai) publishers. She writes a regular column titled' Kala ke Aayam' (Hindi) on art in Chakmak magazine published by Eklavya, Bhopal.
Jain’s project is an adaptation of ‘Dohri Joon’, a folktale from Rajasthan into a 15-20-minute stop motion animation. The folktale has been collected and retold by the well-known researcher from Rajasthan, Vijaydan Detha. This animation will be realised in collaboration with Shivi Bhatnagar, a professional cinematographer and editor based in Delhi. The folktale is about a seth and sethani who betray their daughter in their greed for dowry. They bring her up as a boy and marry 'him' off, but after the marriage the two girls take matters in their own hands. They disown their oppressive upper caste names and set out to forge a new life together. Using Detha’s story as an entry point Jain seeks to grapple with the starkly beautiful yet intensely patriarchal and caste-ridden landscape of Rajasthan and in particular with her own paternal grandfather's town Sheogunj. Using elements of the folktale in the writing of the script, Jain will explore the challenge it offers to the normatives of patriarchy, heterosexuality and caste hegemony, thus attempting to make it speak to the present. By bringing together local stories, sounds and images from in and around Sheogunj, Jain will set the stage for her animation that will include experimenting with drawings, cut-outs and collages, photography, and puppetry techniques. As part of her research, she will also delve into the study of early animation techniques and look at contemporary innovators in stop-motion from across the world.
(Profile Photo Credit: Gauri Gill)
Kulpreet Singh
Kulpreet Singh is a Patiala-based artist, who completed his bachelors in Fine Arts, Political Science & Physical Education from Punjabi University, Patiala, in 2006. His early practice was largely devoted to landscape studies and portraits, and during this time he won several national level competitions in cartooning. While always driven by the need to explore the transformative power of art in society, it was only in 2010 that he started exploring the social angle to art making which led him to doing his masters in Fine Arts, also from Punjabi University. He has since been engaged in bringing together performance and film with other medium-based practices such as drawing, printmaking and installation. He briefly taught art at the Delhi Public School in Faridabad (2016-17). He has participated in several workshops and group shows across India, including Annual Art Exhibition organised by Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi in collaboration with Bharat Bhavan at Bharat Bhavan Bhopal (2019); Artist in Residence at Studio Pannadwar, Thane, Mumbai, as part of International Print Exchange Programme, India; and An Imaginal Affair, organized by Artamour held at The Stainless Gallery, New Delhi (both 2021). His solo shows include Pictorial Expression (2010) at Museum Art Gallery, Chandigarh; and Contemplation (2019) sponsored by Punjab Lalit Kala Akademi, at Punjab Kala Bhawan, Chandigarh.
Singh’s project titled Indelible Black Marks IV - Seva (Social Service) is part of his ongoing engagement with finding ways of sharing his personal and collective grief, especially to try and articulate it in artistic and non-violent ways. This drive comes from his experience of witnessing the peaceful protests turning violent during the farmers’ protests in 2020, and his own encounters while doing seva (or service) during the pandemic. The current project in a similar manner is an exploration of grief, violence and trauma, where he shifts the focus to engaging with the death of people, and loss of flora and fauna, due to environmental issues. The project will involve fieldwork to gather data on lost flora and fauna, and to collect clothes and stories from families of those who have died due to the impact of environmental degradation. The work will be developed into a multimedia installation and performance, and also be documented and made into a film upon completion.
Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation is delighted to announce that the inaugural Mrinalini Mukherjee Creative Arts Grant jury consists of Nancy Adajania, Ranbir Kaleka, and Gulammohammed Sheikh.
Nancy Adajania is a cultural theorist and curator based in Bombay. She was Joint Artistic Director of the 9th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2012). She has curated a number of pathbreaking exhibitions including, most recently, ‘Woman Is As Woman Does’ (CSMVS Museum with JNAF, 2022), a first-ever intergenerational mapping of the works of Indian women artists, filmmakers and activists against the backdrop of the women's movement in India. Adajania's other major research-based exhibitions include the Navjot Altaf retrospective, ‘The Earth’s Heart, Torn Out – Navjot Altaf: A Life in Art’ (National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, with The Guild, 2018), and the Sudhir Patwardhan retrospective, ‘Walking through Soul City’ (NGMA, Mumbai, with The Guild, 2019). One of Adajania’s key preoccupations is the retrieval of artistic positions that have been marginalized from canonical accounts of Indian art history. In this spirit, she has curated ‘Counter-Canon, Counter-Culture: Alternative Histories of Indian Art’, on the pre-history of new media art in India (Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa, 2019) and ‘The Unpaved, Crusty, Earthy Road’, the retrospective of the textile artist and crafts activist Nelly Sethna (Chatterjee & Lal, as part of Cymroza@50, Mumbai, 2021).
Ranbir Kaleka is a multimedia artist based in New Delhi. Trained at College of Arts, Chandigarh, and later at Royal College of Art, London, as a painter, he soon moved into the realm of moving images and immersive video installations. Kaleka was awarded the National Award by the President of India at the 22nd National Exhibition of Art, Lalit Kala Akademi Delhi (1979). In 2007, he was invited by Spertus Museum in Chicago to create a Holocaust Memorial, for which he created a site-specific video installation with oral testimony from Auschwitz. Recent shows include those at Goethe Institut Max Mueller, Mumbai, 2022, Palazzo Madama, Turin, Italy, and ‘Delirium-Equilibrium’ curated by Roobina Karode, KNMA, New Delhi (2021). Other significant shows include ‘Moving Still: Performative Photography in India’, curated by Gayatri Sinha and Diana Freundl, Vancouver Art Gallery (2019) and The Fotofest 2018 Biennial, India/ Contemporary Photography and New Media. Houston, Texas.
Gulammohammed Sheikh is an artist, writer and educationist. In his tenure as teacher of Art History and Professor of Painting at Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara, he has contributed to a renewed understanding of cross cultural themes in artistic pedagogy, in an Indian and international context. Sheikh bridges a historical appreciation of art and art practice with an engagement with contemporary socio-political concerns. Sheikh taught Art History (1960-63 and 1967-81) and was Professor at the Department of Painting (1982-1993) at the MS University of Baroda, Gujarat. He has been Visiting Faculty at the Art Institute of Chicago, USA (1987 and 2002) and Visiting Fellow at Delhi University (2004). He has participated in workshops and residencies in India and internationally at Montalvo, California, USA, (2005), South Asia Regional Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA (2000) and Civitella Ranieri Center, Umbertide, Italy (1998) etc.
His solo exhibitions from 1961 include Mappings, The Guild at Museum Gallery, Mumbai (2004); Palimpsest at Vadehra Gallery, New Delhi and Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai (2001); Kahat Kabir at Vadehra Gallery, New Delhi (1998); Returning Home (a retrospective of work from 1968-1985) at Centre Georges Pompidou, Musee National d’Art Moderne, Paris (1985). He was founder member of Group 1890 in 1963. Sheikh has participated in several group exhibitions: Chalo India, A New Era of Indian Art, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2008); Contemporary Art from India, Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago (2007); Edge of Desire, curated by Chaitanya Sambrani, shown at New Delhi and Mumbai (2006), New York, Mexico City, and Berkeley, California (2005) and Perth, Australia (2004); Sheikh has lectured widely on Indian art in Europe, U.K., USA, Australia etc Sheikh has been awarded, the Padmabhushan in 2014, the Padmashri in 1983 by Government of India in 1983, Kalidas Samman by the Madhya Pradesh Government in 2002, Ravi Varma Puraskaram by Government of Kerala in 2009. In 2010 he was conferred D. Litt. by Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata.
The artist lives and works in Vadodara, Gujarat.