FICA announces the Emerging Artists Award for 2022

Previously focusing on identifying and supporting an individual artist from India, FICA’s Emerging Artist Award is now re-envisioned as a collective forum to mentor and engage with a set of 10 young practitioners. Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art along with Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation announced the recipients of Emerging Artists Award 2022 (EAA+). As the Emerging Artists Award (EAA+), the platform will carry forward the mentorship and exhibitory aspects of our earlier editions by earmarking workshops for the selected participants, and developing an open-ended dissemination forum at the end of the grant period.

The 10 artists include Ankan Datta, Madhukar Mucharla, Madhurjya Dey, Priyanka D’Souza, M Thamshangpha, Malik Irtiza, Pahul Singh, Zeropowercut, Surajit Mudi and Sandra Thomas.

All the 10 artists work on various fields of art. From poetry to photography and from installations to drawings, every artist has an unique field of specialisation and every artist has a voice of their own. They try to put forward their point of view in the form of art. Madhukar Mucharla works with issues of caste and anti-caste movements whereas M Thamshangpa deals with concepts of discrimination together with an idea of self-identification and self-expression from Naga tribal culture. Sandra Thomas from Kerala addresses the existence, role and influence of consumer culture and its impact upon Kerala society through her experiments with a range of industrial materials and studies of the body.

“Through my practice I’m experimenting with the idea of taking the studio to the public space by creating a mobile studio and going to different localities, documenting my journey by capturing what I perceive and enclosing the whole process”, says Surajit Mudi.

Seeing his father working with leather to make footwear, from childhood was Madhukar’s source of inspiration to work using leather as a medium. Although i have been seeing my father use leather to make footwear in my childhood, I only understood the possibility of using leather during a workshop on leather puppetry in my Post Graduation. As I searched for my own identity in my artwork, I chose leather to express my thoughts which came through my family vocation” says Madhukar. He believes that these grants are very much helpful for someone like him who come from a under privileged background. “The grant gives hope that one can dream of becoming an artist, no matter where they come from”.

The 10 artists were selected from out of 400 applications by an eminent jury panel consisted of curator and researcher Bhooma Padmanabhan, artist and educator Krishnapriya CP, artist Rakhi Peswani, theater director and lighting designer Zuleikha Chaudhuri, artist Asim Waqif and Vidya Shivadas, director, FICA.