Contributors

Anudev Manoharan is a multidisciplinary artist who teaches painting at the Government R.L.V College of Music and Fine Arts, Kochi. He is also a Visual Arts PhD candidate at the Department of Painting in Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan.

Arindam Manna is an artist living and working in Suri, West Bengal. He completed his BFA in Painting (2014-2018) at Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan. After that, he was awarded his MFA from Shiv Nadar University, Uttar Pradesh, in 2020. He then got the chance to engage in online platforms (KHOJ Support Network, CONA Projects Bombay). In 2021, he was selected for the Kochi Muziris Bienalle/Students Bienalle, and his work was published in Postscript., He has since participated in a group show organised by The Raza Foundation/ Yuva Sambhuva and has also launched an ‘open studio’ to share his practice. He is a part of the not-for-profit interdisciplinary research organisation Society For Research Alternatives (SFRA).

Ashutosh Potdar is an award-winning Marathi writer who has penned several one-act and full-length plays, poems, and short fiction, and authored scholarly essays in Marathi and English. He is the co-editor of a volume of essays on performance-making and the archive and an anthology of art writing in Marathi published by Routledge India and the Sharjah Art Foundation, respectively. Of his several accolades for writing, he is the recipient of the Maharashtra government’s Ram Ganesh Gadkari Award. Ashutosh currently teaches literature and drama at FLAME University, Pune.

Bina Sarkar Ellias is a poet and founder-editor-designer-publisher of the award-winning International Gallerie, a global arts and ideas magazine encouraging unity in diversity for over 25 years. She is also an art curator and fiction writer. The author of seven books of poetry, her published works have since been translated into Mandarin, Tagalog, Spanish, French, Greek, Arabic, and Urdu.

Deepa Bhasthi is a writer and translator who occasionally works on visual art projects. Her research interests include sociolinguistics, politics of food, and landscape versus land. The first book she translated, Dr Kota Shivarama Karanth’s ‘The Same Village, The Same Tree’ was released in July 2022. A second is forthcoming from Yoda Press, New Delhi.

Don Duncan is a writer and media practitioner who also lectures on broadcast practice at Queen’s University, Belfast.

Dr Debaroti Chakraborty is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Performing Arts, Presidency University, India. As a researcher–artist, her areas of interest include oral history, women’s narratives, border studies, and creating cross-cultural and inter-cultural performances based on lived experiences. She is the co-editor of two volumes published with Routledge titled Centering Borders in Latin American and South Asian Contexts: Aesthetics and Politics of Cultural Production (July 2022) and Pandemic of Perspectives: Creative Re-imaginings  (November 2022). She also writes a column on invitation for the Daily Telegraph as a performance critic.

Gajānan Mādhav Muktibodh , a Hindi poet, critic, essayist, fiction-writer, and astute political commentator, was a key figure in Hindi literary modernism in India. Born in 1917, he witnessed the most tumultuous years in history, both globally and in India, until his death in 1964. Personally, he struggled both personally, as he incessantly toiled to sustain his writing by moving from one odd job to another, but also on the literary front, by posing significant challenges to established notions of aesthetics, the socio-political, and the role of a writer. With great literary acumen, Muktibodh created poems of searing intensity and philosophical depth to address the human predicament of his time, although they remain as relevant and apposite as ever.

Indrani Perera is a Sri Lankan/German/Australian poet living on Wurrundjeri Country in Naarm (Melbourne, Australia). The author of poetry collections Defenestration and pas de deux, she was shortlisted for the 2022 Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Writing. Her poetry has been published in several journals, including Burrow, Cordite, Not Very Quiet, and Teesta Review Journal, and anthologised by Geelong Writers, Ginninderra Press, Girls On Key and WA Poets Inc. Indrani is the founder of Pocketry, the home of unheard voices, and editor of the Pocketry Almanack print journal.

Jasmine Kaur is a Punjabi, queer writer/artist. She likes to surround herself with stories and poetics in any medium, including audio, video, still images, and performances. Some of her work has been published by EPW, VIBE, streetcake magazine, and Tilt (by QueerAbad).

Kiran Mungekar is an artist completing her final year in the Painting MFA at Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan, after completing her BFA from Abhinav Kala Mahavidyalay, SPPU, Pune. She mainly works with drawings and exploring the possibilities of video documenting as a source of inspiration. Her practice centres around creating visual interactive fields for viewers to engage with questions about themselves and derives from the mundane and its association with sentiment. This cathartic approach allows her to embody various references, from texts to the objecthood of objects/images, and consider them formal elements in her work.

Koyal Raheja is an artist whose practice focuses on connecting her familial and autobiographical memory to public history through drawings, paintings, and physical spaces. In her work, she often questions systems and structures of the past and present through the lens of conformity, rebellion, and separation. Currently based in Bangalore, she works on different personal and commissioned projects.

Makarand Bharambe is a Marathi poet with two collections of poems to his credit: Monalisa (1993), felicitated with the Vishakha Award, and Swayambhu (2022).

Mandar Karanjkar is a Hindustani classical vocalist who has trained under the tutelage of late Pt. Vijay Sardeshmukh. He also composes poetry of saints like Kabir, Tulsidas, Surdas, and Tukaram. Mandar has authored four books and has contributed to several newspapers such as Loksatta, Sakal, and Lokmat. Mandar is a founding trustee of the Baithak Foundation and also consults with manufacturing and software companies to develop and better their communication and strategies.

Mandar Purandare is a musician, actor, translator, and lover of flowers, nature, and people. Born in Pune, he has been in close proximity to the stage and acting since he was a child and has performed in Marathi, Hindi and also German. Currently, he is a lecturer of Hindi at the Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland.

Nimish K Sharma writes and researches poetry in English and Urdu. He has a postgraduate degree in Literature.

Runa Das Chaudhuri is trained in sociology and has a PhD from the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC). At present, she teaches as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, BHK Mahavidyalaya. Her work has been published in several journals, such as South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Contemporary South Asia, International Sociology Reviews, and Entanglements: Experiments in Multimodal Ethnography, and in edited volumes, including Sarai Reader 09: Projections, among others. Her areas of specialization include the sociology of urban consumption in India and the histories of spiritualist practices in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Bengal.

Sanchayan Ghosh is a renowned interdisciplinary contemporary artist and art educator, who received training from both experimental and traditional theatrical and visual art personas. He has created a distinctive visual language and a wide range of interdisciplinary works on par with the practices of the time. This has developed into one of the main sources of inspiration and a series of institutional creative interventions that support the development of subsequent cohorts of student practices at Shantiniketan’s Kala-Bhavana Faculty of Visual Arts.

Sarban Chowdhury is a ceramist, designer, and educator. He completed his MFA from the Government College of Art & Craft, Kolkata. He has been invited to symposiums and art residency programs within India and abroad, including Centrum Ceramiki in Poland, Art Ichol, Piramal Residency, and Uttarayan Foundation. He was recently named one of the top ten emerging artists in an exhibition hosted by MASH and supported by KHOJ. His works feature in collections of major museums and art collectors across the globe. He is currently teaching as an Assistant Professor at NIFT (National Institute of Fashion Technology), Jodhpur.

Saumya Malviya is a social anthropologist currently working as an Assistant Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Indian Institute of Technology, Mandi. He earned his doctoral degree from Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. He is also a published poet in Hindi, as well as regularly translates fiction and poetry from Hindi/Urdu to English. He is currently working on an anthropological biography of Hindi poet Gajānan Mādhav Muktibodh and translating his selected writings into English. His poetry collection titled Ghar Ek Nāmumkin Jagah Hai has been published from Hind-Yugm Prakāshan Delhi in 2021.

Shivnath Ashok Takte Ashvikar has been teaching English in colleges for almost thirteen years. He is a researcher, translator and poet writing in Marathi.

Srikar Hari Srikar Hari is a photographer from Mumbai. He graduated in Digital Video Production from Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore (2015) and was part of the International Photography Program at the Pathshala Institute of South Asian Media Studies. His work has been exhibited at the Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai, DRIK Gallery in Dhaka and awarded the Toto Award for Photoraphy in 2021. Currently he is based in Rhode Island pursuing his MFA in Photography at Rhode Island school of Design.

Sukla Singha is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the department of English, at Swami Vivekananda Mahavidyalaya, Tripura. Her poems and translations have appeared in Muse India, Café Dissensus, The Sunflower Collective, and Yendai, Aainanagar, among others. She has contributed to anthologies such as An Unsuitable Woman (2017), Kirat: Contemporary Poetry in English from Tripura (2018), Witness: The Red River Book of Poetry of Dissent (2021) and Of Dry Tongues and Brave Hearts (2022).

Vandana Bhagwat has worked as a member of the English faculty in a college in Lonavala for twenty-five years, and she is the founder member of Aksharnandan School, Pune. Vandana has published two collections of short stories, a novel, and critical writings on Kamal Desai and feminist writing in Marathi.

Vedant Srinivas graduated from Delhi University with a degree in Philosophy and went on to get a diploma in Filmmaking. His interests combine literature, anthropology, cinema, and art history. His writing has appeared in journals such as Borderless, E-fiction India, and The Chakkar.

Veeranganakumari Solanki is an independent curator and writer based in India. She is interested the merging of interdisciplinary forms and creative practices to create dialogue in public and private spaces as well as the convergence of images across disciplines. Her research and practice consider how historical and contemporary thought inform exhibition-making and artistic practices. The 2019 Brooks International Research Fellow at Tate Modern and Resident at Delfina Foundation, she is currently the Programme Director at Space Studio, Baroda, a core team member of Art Chain India, and facilitator of the Curatorial Practice MFA course at Kathmandu University. She is the curator of ‘Future Landing: The Arcade’ at the Serendipity Arts Festival 2022.

Vishakha Apte received a Bachelor’s degree in Fine arts from Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai, in 1987. She is the recipient of several awards from different organizations including the National Exhibition, New Delhi; the Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, Bangalore; and the Camlin Art Foundation Award, Mumbai. Vishakha has participated in several festivals such as the Tokyo International Mini-Print Triennial, Tama Art University, Japan, International Print Biennial, Guanlan, China, International Print Biennial, Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal, the 17th International triennial of Small Graphic forms, Poland, Harmony Art and National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. Some of her solo exhibitions took place at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai; Alliance Francaise de Bhopal; and at Kerala Lalitha kala Akademi, Kochi. Vishakha’s work is represented in the collection of the galleries such as the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; the  Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi; Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal, Ostrobothnian Museum, Vaasa in Finland; and the Maulana Azad Centre for Indian Culture in Cairo, Egypt.

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Editor: Ashutosh Potdar

Guest Editor: Purvi Rajpuria

Proofreading and copyediting: Prajakta Karandikar, Yvonne Vaz, Asmita Choudhury, Arundhati Karumampoyil, Manasi Marathe.

Courtesy for slider images:Koyal Raheja, Vishakha Apte, Sarban Chowdhury.

Courtesy for Section images: Vishakha Apte, Koyal Raheja, The Natyashodh Archives, Kolkata, Arindam Manna, Vishakha Apte, Koyal Raheja