Arts Research | 2014-2025
This programme was closed in 2024.
The Arts Research programme from 2014-2024 engaged scholars, researchers, and practitioners to research various histories and expressions of artistic practices in India, in order to foster wider perspectives, understandings, interpretations and engagements in the arts. These projects investigated marginalised or relatively unexplored areas, created spaces for dialogue between theory and practice, offered new readings of artistic practices, and used interdisciplinary approaches to break new conceptual ground, among other things.
During these 10 years, 99 projects were supported and implemented in numerous disciplines, languages, and regions.
The Arts Research programme from 2020-2024 was made possible with support from BNP Paribas India.
In 2014, after eight years, the erstwhile Arts Research and Documentation programme underwent a review process by a panel of experts comprising Susie Tharu, MD Muthukumaraswamy, Aneesh Pradhan, and Rahul Roy. In order to develop a broad sense of the current landscape of arts research in India and understand the relevance of this programme, views from the field were presented to the panel. (Please refer to our Voices from the Field Report) The panel made a set of recommendations to IFA and the current Arts Research programme is an outcome of those recommendations.
In 2024, a three-day festival called Past Forward: The Pleasure, Purpose and Practice of Arts Research celebrating 70 diverse projects in Arts Research through panel discussions, film screenings, workshops, talks, performances, and an exhibition, was held at BIC. The projects curated in the festival looked back on the 10 years of the programme, and together, weave a tapestry of complex realities and imaginations that the projects find themselves in. A panel of experts comprising A Mangai, Manu V Devadevan, Sachin Ketkar, and Shuddhabrata Sengupta. The panel made a set of recommendations to IFA and the current Arts Research programme is an outcome of those recommendations (also see the Voices from the Field Report).