India Foundation for the Arts (IFA), in collaboration with Asia Art Archive, invites applications for one Archival Fellowship for a period of 8-10 months to support creative practitioners—curators, artists, designers, film-makers, art historians, programmers—to work with the materials in AAA’s digital archive, partially accessible online and fully available on site in Delhi and Hong Kong. (Click here for a list of AAA Collection highlights on India Projects.) The intention is to give applicants the opportunity to engage with the archive in innovative and original ways culminating in a tangible outcome such as an exhibition, film, web-design, publication, etc., at the end of 10 months in April 2016.

IFA’s Archival Fellowships have been initiated with the two-fold objective of providing creative practitioners with an opportunity to generate new, critical, and creative approaches to public engagement with archives while energising archives as spaces for dialogue and discourse.

About the Fellowship

Applicant profile: IFA seeks applications from creative practitioners with previous artistic or curatorial experience and a strong interest in archives. From visual artists and designers, to curators and programmers, this fellowship seeks project proposals that engage with the AAA collection in imaginative ways. Practitioners who are Indian nationals or have been a resident of India for five or more years are eligible to apply.

• Financial assistance & other support: The fellowship provides an honorarium of Rs 2,00,000 for the duration of 10 months towards research facilities at the archives of AAA. The Fellowship also covers a two-week research trip to Hong Kong in 2015, where the library and physical archive of AAA is located.
  A separate budget will be provided for the final outcome.

• Important dates: 
  The deadline for receiving applications is 10 April 2015.
  Shortlisted candidates will be informed by 24 April 2015.
  Interviews with shortlisted candidate are expected to take place on first week of May 2015.
  The Fellowship will commence on 25 May 2015 for a period of 10 months.

• A letter of interest explaining how you would benefit from this Archival Fellowship. Identify aspects of your practice that you think will be honed and further developed during the course of the Fellowship;
• A short description of the project you would like to work on using the AAA archive as a resource, explaining in detail the framework, concept, methodology and outcome;
• A brief description of a project you have been involved with either as a curator, arts practitioner, or researcher. The description should include the vision, the approach, the processes, and the outcomes that have resulted from that project. Include documentation of the project, which may be 6 to 8 scanned or printed images with titles and dates, DVD (max 4 minutes), catalogues, artworks, performances, or reviews;
• Your curriculum vitae.