RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP 2012 | ANANNYA MEHTTA

Indian curator Anannya Mehtta has been selected for the Research Fellowship 2012. Mehtta was selected by an expert jury of curators and professionals that included Dr. Irit Rogoff (Goldsmiths), Tessa Jackson and Grant Watson (Iniva), Aaron Cezar (DELFINA), and Vidya Shivadas (FICA).

"Curatorial knowledge for the creation and the staging of exhibitions continuously proliferates. What is lacking, however, is the archival and the institutional knowledge built through these curatorial choices that define each exhibition. How did these curatorial moments emerge and how have they been interpreted", asks Mehtta.

Mehtta’s research proposal titled ‘Sequence, Consequence: Curatorial Choice and the Production of Meaning in Contemporary Art in India’ is an analytical research work that seeks to investigate the production of meanings and identities in contemporary curatorial practice in India, and the underlying conflicts in the curatorial process. What is the curator’s role in the production of narratives through the spatial organisation of works and texts? How is the role of traditional material framed within the contemporary? How can we use the archival and institutional knowledge that are currently being collated as a part of the curatorial projects to analyse the inner worlds of contemporary curation? Given her location as a curator at the Devi Art Foundation, Mehtta will use the past exhibitions held at the institution as case studies.

Anannya Mehtta completed her Masters in Political Science from Delhi University, and has received a diploma in filmmaking from PCFE Prague. In 2005 she received a Sarai fellowship to study non-commercial film viewing cultures in Delhi. As an independent filmmaker she has directed, scripted and produced several documentaries and short films. She joined the Devi Art Foundation in 2010, and has been the Assistant Curator there since.

The FICA Research Fellowship 2012 is developed in partnership with the Delfina Foundation, Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts) and the Goldsmith’s Department of Visual Cultures and the PhD. Programme in Curatorial/Knowledge, London. The Fellowship aims to provide an opportunity for intensive research in the field of visual arts by curators and researchers who have an innovative visual culture project, and who might benefit from the research and curatorial work that is being done by the fellowship's partner institutions in London. Mehtta will be in residence for 12 weeks from late September to December 2012 as a part of this programme, where she will be developing her research project while participating in Iniva and Delfina’s programming, and attending lectures at the Goldsmiths College.

The partnership with The Delfina Foundation also enables the participation of an additional research fellow from the Middle East & North Africa, alongside the FICA Fellow. For this year the Syrian curator Nadia Christidi has been chosen from the MENA region.