Site, Process, Situations

Seeing this crisis as an opportunity to explore future directions and imagine alternative communities, collaborations and solidarities, the Foundation supported seven fellows in its cycles of 2020 and 2021 through a production grant and mentorship program spanning across a year each.

In this conversation, the artists’ Ajmal Shifaz and Sumantra Sardar, will present their projects from the Fellowship (2020), examining sites of political conflict and capitalist contradictions respectively. Shifaz’s Echo of Nothing engaged with objects of damage and discard that are an archive of violence in neighbourhoods in North-East Delhi. Through performative gestures, jugaad workshops with children and metal workers, and employing ‘play’ as a form, these processes turned into a field of creativity in an electronic and scrap processing centre. Here, the insertion of participatory community building and pedagogic practices transformed memories of loss into a mobile sonic sculpture that saw new forms of renewal, joy, and sociality.

Sardar’s Fading Lands investigated the transformation of agricultural land into sites of a jeans manufacturing business in the Nahazari-Mahisgot area in West Bengal, which neigbour his native land in Rasapunja. While facing difficulties to work in public spaces during the pandemic, the artist turned his lens into a journalistic and photographic documentation of labour practices, toxic chemicals in factories, and the degeneration of eco-systems (that turn the Ganges River blue) enabling a criticality of what consumption, production, fast fashion, and waste mean in our time, and whose effects are planetary. It evolved into an open-ended electronic media book.

Neena Naishadh and Sharmila Samant will offer their reflections on their contributions as initiators and learnings in the Neekoee Foundation Fellowships. Along with being the respondent, Kuldeep Patil will share his role as a facilitator within this Fellowship program.

Neena Naishadh is an engaging conversationist and a compelling crusader who attracts young talent to help build Ahmedabad’s heritage, art and cultural identity. Neekoee Foundation, her non-profit entity was formed to expose the city to top quality media productions and art exhibitions from India and around the globe. The foundation’s vision is to ‘change minds though Arts’ and she builds impact and influence through discourse, debate and discussions with stalwarts from the creative world. From films to art, book clubs and travel, Neena has invited quality theatre, film and art shows to exhibit in Ahmedabad. She was a part of the production of two critically acclaimed films by Amol Palekar and continues to build content for children to promote art and aesthetics in the city. Neena runs Uniglobe Perfect Connections, a travel management company and has been a past chair for CII IWN.

Sharmila Samant is an artist, pedagogue, and former core faculty member at the Department of Art, Design and Performance at the Shiv Nadar University. In addition, she has been associated with activist groups and has engaged in collaborative and participatory art projects with various communities while exploring ideas of exchange, accessibility and authorship. Samant graduated in Sculpture from Sir J. J. School of Arts, which was followed by a diploma in Interior Design, a Fellowship at the Kanoria Center for Arts, Ahmedabad, and artist-residencies at Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and at Gasworks in London. She was one of the founders of the Mumbai-based collective, Open Circle, that sought to engage with contemporary socio-political issues via an integration of theory and practice. She contributed as an Advisory Member and Mentor at the Social Practice Fellowships, Neekoee Foundation, Ahmedabad.

Ajmal Shifaz, (b. 1993; Ernakulam) is an artist whose practice is process-oriented and transcends the confines of medium. With a BFA from the Government College of Fine Arts, Kerala (2016) and an MFA from Shiv Nadar University, Delhi (2019), Ajmal integrates anthropology and collaborative influences into his work. His projects delve into themes such as social relations, memory, and collective violence, manifesting as sculptures, moving images, performances, and installations. These serve as ephemeral grounds for the exchange and repair of knowledge. Central to Ajmal’s methodology is the performative power of detaching objects and spaces from their original functions, drawing inspiration from DIY culture and its Indian iteration. Ajmal co-founded 0penstudi0, a format for collaborating with communities on long-term art projects. His work extends beyond mere aesthetic enhancement, actively involving local communities, particularly children and youth, fostering collective imagination and ownership. Ajmal has executed community and public art projects in various locations, including Dadri, Uttar Pradesh; the Shaheen Bagh protests; CompoundLab13, Dharavi, Mumbai; and Janastu, Karnataka. His work has been shown at the Kochi-Muziris Students’ Biennale, Kerala; Kiran Nadar Museum of Art; Forplay Society, Kerala; and Basel Social Club, Basel, among others.

Sumantra Sardar (b. 1991; Kolkata) is an artist and educator whose practice has evolved from working in a studio space to actively observing and engaging with his surroundings. He completed his BFA from Kala-Bhavana, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan in 2014 and his MFA from S.N. School of Arts & Communication, University of Hyderabad in 2017. Since returning to his native land Rasapunja in South 24 Parganas, Kolkata, in 2018, he has been involved in translating his observations about the ecological phenomena through exploring mediums ranging from photography to farming, painting, video, extraction of colors, and making papers from plant-based residues. Sumantra’s work often explores the idea of memory, collective consciousness, and transformative learning. He is interested in the behavioral patterns, an ecosystem of consumption and ritualistic practices that are rooted in physical and psychological experiences. His project received a grant from Neekoee Foundation and a support grant from Khoj, New Delhi in 2020. He has been the recipient of the Merit Award in Painting by the Ministry of Information & Cultural Affairs, Govt. of WB in 2018 and the Merit & Gold Award by Prafulla Dahanukar Art Foundation in 2017 & 2016. Currently, he lives and works in Kolkata.

Kuldeep Patil is an independent artist, researcher and writer. Presently they are working with the documenta und Museum Fridericianum gGmbH, Germany X Asia Art Archive in India as a Scientific Fellow, conducting research on Culture@WSF 2004 to build a concise archive of the event. They have previously worked with the Student’s Biennale, Kochi (2022); Neekoee Social Practice Fellowship (2020, 2021) as Coordinator and as Documentation Executive (2020) with the Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi. As a writer they have contributed to Takshila Yearbook, The Wire and MASH India. Their work processes are invested in understanding the socio-political dynamics of spaces of art and culture through various positions, and at the intersection of making theory in relation to evolving forms of sociality. They emphasize thinking as a crucial tool that enables overshadowed knowledge formulations and its forms of dissemination.

Respondent: Kuldeep Patil (Artist, Researcher & Writer).