Asia Art Archive in India

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Asia Art Archive in India

A non-profit organisation dedicated to documenting the recent history of art in Asia within an intern

About Asia Art Archive in India:
Asia Art Archive in India (AAA in I) was established in 2013, a reflection of AAA’s widening scope of activities within the country. With an on-site digital collection housed in New Delhi in a space open to visitors, AAA in I has organised projects, workshops, and programmes over the years with the mission to build archives and instigate dialogue and critical think

ing around contemporary art from India. AAA in I works in partnership with various individuals, organisations, and institutions in the field that share AAA’s values. About Asia Art Archive (AAA):
Asia Art Archive (AAA) is an independent non-profit organisation initiated in 2000 in response to the urgent need to document and make accessible the multiple recent histories of art in the region. With one of the most valuable collections of material on art freely available from its website and onsite library, AAA builds tools and communities to collectively expand knowledge through research, residency, and educational programmes.

24/06/2026

[Reading Room Highlights | Artist Networks Across the Global South]

We're excited to share a selection from our Reading Room that opens ways to think through how contemporary artists forge networks and alliances, moving between and across formations of collectives, groups, studios, circles, and spirals. These multilingual publications focus on independent artist initiatives, exploring dialogic and discursive modes of being together.

Highlights include:

📚 'How to Pin Down Smoke: ruangrupa since 2000' (2026, in English) by Afterall situates modes of collective organising (and being) of Ruangrupa within the media cultures, technologies, and contemporary urban life of Jakarta at the turn of the millennium—and comes with a playlist compiled by ruru!

📚 'The Light of Distant Stars' (2025, in English & Arabic) by Contemporary Image Collective compiles their long-term research on the histories of African liberation movements in Cairo, exemplifying how artists in the region are forging ways of thinking and working together through collective research and publishing work.

📚 'Call #2' (2025, in multiple Indian languages) is a multiform publication by Hekh comprising experimental writings on space-making as an artistic gesture, gathering reflections on the many acts of wandering that contemporary artists negotiate across disciplines, geographies, and time.

📚 'Between Us, A Thread' (2025, in Arabic, English & Nepali), curated by Palestinian artist Ahmed Alaqra for PhotoKTM 2025, gathers photographs, letters, poems, and fragile murmurs exchanged between imagemakers across the Arab World via email, holding space for memory, care, and connection in times of conflict.

📚 ‘Womanifesto: Flowing Connections' (2023, in English & Thai) offers reflections on how a collective of women artists in Thailand, and Southeast Asia more broadly, have been cultivating communal spaces of exchange through fluid spaces of gatherings.

📚 In 'Drawing Resistance: Issue 2 – Lockdown' (2020, in multiple Indian languages), independent artists came together to collectively respond to situations of precarity produced by the Covid-19 pandemic in India via a zine.

16/06/2026

[Open Call for SSAF–AAA Research Grant for Archiving Histories of Art, Ideas, and Visual Culture 2026]

The Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation (SSAF) and Asia Art Archive (AAA) in India are pleased to announce the 2026 edition of the SSAF–AAA Research Grant for Archiving Histories of Art, Ideas, and Visual Culture.

We invite proposals that interrogate how visual and cultural print materials of different kinds contributed to, constituted, and were embedded in the cultural politics of a historical moment. Preference will be given to proposals that focus on materials in regional languages that are not reachable or are out of circulation, and are not easily available or located in public collections, with an intent to make these materials accessible to the best extent possible, and in meaningful and productive ways.

This grant is eligible for individuals who are Indian nationals residing in India, or collectives whose members are all Indian nationals residing in India.

Deadline for application is Fri, 31 July 2026.

Please visit the link below for details on the open call and application process:
https://aaa.org.hk/en/programmes/programmes/open-call-for-ssafaaa-research-grant-for-archiving-histories-of-art-ideas-and-visual-culture-2026

11/06/2026

[Announcement | Delhi by DESIGN: Part II – Manoeuvres Around the Masterplan]

We are excited to present Part II of our exhibition series Delhi by Design. Titled “Manoeuvres Around the Masterplan,” this iteration brings into focus the urban planning histories of Delhi. It takes as its throughline Design magazine’s
recurring question, “What does Delhi’s future look like?” and showcases various maps of Delhi’s masterplan and critical examination around it as featured in the magazine.

Today, as we inhabit a supposedly “future Delhi” much different than what the magazine imagined, how do we grapple with the very idea of planning? Rather than becoming entangled in existing urban planning frameworks, we ask: How can this exhibition expand discussions on ways of living that exceed master planning logics? And how might these diverse modes of inhabiting the city contribute to our everyday realities today, as they actively claim space, reshape environments, and participate in the expanding body of the city?

“Delhi by DESIGN” is a series of three exhibitions that re-stages conversations on and around the city of Delhi from Design magazine (1957-1988) and locates them in our contemporary contexts and conditions.

The exhibition will be on view until 16 Oct 2026. Visit by appointment only. Walk-ins not allowed. Book an appointment through the link in bio.

Our gratitude to Meher Wilshaw and the family of Patwant Singh. Over 150 issues of Design are now accessible online via AAA's website. We also extend our thanks to Toxics Link and F**A Reading Room for generously loaning the publications for this iteration.

03/06/2026

[Programme recap | Film screening and conversation with Uma Chakravarti and Priyanka Chhabra]

In May, we hosted a screening of ‘Woh Subah Hami Se Aayegi’ (That Dawn That We Will Bring, 2025), a film by historian Uma Chakravarti, in our Reading Room. Tracing an arc of the autonomous women’s movement in India from late 1970s onwards, the film, thoughtfully edited by Priyanka Chhabra, sources the entirety of its footage from a repertoire of existing feminist documentary cinema and select fictional films.

Par for course with the movement, the film too, invoked strong responses ranging from the nostalgic to the skeptical. An intense discussion unfolded after the screening between Uma, Priyanka, and the audience, with large parts of the conversation focused on the overlay between the film’s representational politics and the filmmaking process. For instance, the question of gaps in the film elicited a range of responses: some asked for those gaps to be added into the film, treating it as an endlessly open project; others remarked on the gaps as a symptom of the film’s premise/method, where, by only sourcing existing films, one was potentially reinforcing absences as well.

To what extent have documentaries about the women’s movement critiqued its limitations, particularly its tensions with anti-caste and q***r struggles? What was the movement’s position vis-à-vis the state and its institutions?

What does it mean to treat cinema as footage; to use it as fragments in assembling layered histories of a social movement? Can we read this film as an archive of feminist filmmaking practice in India? And what would it mean to annotate onto its layers, generating a space to address gaps and silences beyond the conventions of the archive?

Given our interest in thinking through the creative impulses and visual histories of the autonomous women's movement in South Asia, we welcome artists and researchers to engage with a small set of ephemeral materials and publications that we have gathered over the years.

To visit, book an appointment through the link in bio.

Photo: Sumedha Gupta

20/05/2026

[Programmes: Delhi by DESIGN – Part 1]

Over the past four months, our ongoing exhibition, ‘Delhi by DESIGN: Cultural Infrastructure and the City' has sparked conversations with visitors about shifting nature of public art institutions as well as art writing and criticism.

In February and April, students from the School of Planning and Architecture and the Department of Art History & Art Appreciation, Jamia Millia Islamia, visited our office space. Walkthroughs were followed by discussion, during which we shared our specific interest in engaging with Design magazine, situating it within our ongoing research on art journals and periodicals in regional languages.

In April, we invited Professor Shukla Sawant from Jawaharlal Nehru University to engage with the materials on view. In a session with visual arts students, she reflected on the complex relationship between state patronage, artists, and art institutions in Delhi in the post-1947 period. Students from Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University, the National Museum Institute, and Jamia Millia Islamia participated in the session.

The exhibition continues until 29 May 2026. Please visit by appointment through the link in our bio!

Image 1 and 2: Students from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi
Image 3 and 4: Students from the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi
Image 5, 6 and 7: Session with Professor Shukla Sawant

Photo: Sumedha Gupta

11/03/2026

[Delhi by DESIGN: Part I – Cultural Infrastructure and the City | AAA in India, New Delhi | On view till 30 May. 2026]

We are excited to share some close-up installation views from our latest exhibition 'Delhi by DESIGN: Part I – Cultural Infrastructure and the City.' Drop by our office space to explore the evolving landscape of art and cultural institutions in the capital, as restaged through materials drawn from Design magazine (1957–88), including editorials, interdisciplinary writings, advertisements, cover designs, blueprints, and architectural layouts.

The exhibition will be on view until 30 May 2026 (Monday - Friday, 11 am to 5 pm at Asia Art Archive in India, New Delhi).

Walk-ins not allowed. To visit, book an appointment through the link in bio.

24/02/2026

[New Arrivals in the Reading Room | Publications from Kiran Nadar Museum of Art]

We are pleased to receive a donation of publications and exhibition catalogues from Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi for AAA in India’s Reading Room.

Highlights include:

📚 Cynical Love: Life in the Everyday (2012) was a group exhibition that explored meditations on technology, and its position within a globalised world.

📚 Zones of Contact: Propositions on the Museum (2013) draws on curatorial, artistic, and archival methodologies to articulate the museum as a social space that fosters engagement across cultures and communities.

📚 Seven Contemporaries (2013) brings together artists’ notes and interviews to reimagine the received category of “women artists” through the practices of Anita Dube, Bharti Kher, Dayanita Singh, Ranjani Shettar, Sheba Chhachhi, Sheela Gowda, and Sonia Khurana.

📚 You Can’t Keep Acid in a Paper Bag (2015) was conceived in three parts as a retrospective exhibition of artist Nalini Malani, spanning her practice from 1969 to 2014.

📚 Collection Highlights (2010–2017) comprises three volumes documenting exhibitions held at KNMA during its initial years.

📚 Our Time for a Future Caring (2019) covers the India Pavilion exhibition commemorating the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi at the 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in 2019, with notes on the curatorial premise and exhibition-making as a commemorative gesture.

📚 KNMA Exhibitions 2010–2020, part of the Institutional Memory Series, is a log of exhibition-making at the museum in its first decade.

📚 The Archival Gaze: A Timeline of Photography in India (2022) is an edited volume of essays reflecting on technological and aesthetic developments in photography in India since the 1840s.

📚 Very Small Feelings (2023) reimagines the figure of the child and makes new propositions about childhood.

To browse our catalogue on Librarika or to book an appointment to visit our Reading Room in New Delhi, please use the links in bio.

04/02/2026

[Announcing AAA in India’s new exhibition]

We are thrilled to present “Delhi by DESIGN,” a new exhibition series that re-stages conversations on and around the city of Delhi from the legendary Design magazine and locates them in our contemporary contexts and conditions.

Set to unfold in three parts at AAA in India’s office space in New Delhi over the course of 2026, Part I of the exhibition “Cultural Infrastructure and the City,” on view now, explores the numerous spaces and infrastructures for art and cultural institutions in Delhi that featured in Design magazine. These spaces were designed, planned, and built from the 1950s onwards, producing a robust ecosystem and vision for art and culture in a newly independent nation. We ask, what has shifted since then, and what remains the same? What is the place of these infrastructures and institutions in contemporary discourse? At a time when critical voices—be it about culture or politics—are stifled, how do we read Design’s resounding commitment to public culture?

Design (1957–88) was an English-language monthly magazine from India edited by Patwant Singh. It carried writing and commentary on architecture, visual art, industrial and graphic design, and urban planning in India.

The exhibition will be on view until 30 May 2026. Visit by appointment only. Walk-ins not allowed. Book an appointment through the link in bio.

Our gratitude to Meher Wilshaw and the family of Patwant Singh. Over 150 issues of Design are now accessible online via AAA's website.

Image: Cover design by Pieter Brattinga in Design: Incorporating Indian Builder, vol. 22, no. 11 (November 1978)

28/01/2026

Inlaks Foundation () and Asia Art Archive in India are pleased to announce Afreen Akhtar () as the grantee for the Inlaks-AAA Art Grant 2026.

Afreen's project for the grant is titled “Ye wairana qafas bhi, ashiyana bhi, chaman bhi hai: an audio-visual enquiry into the historicity and (un)broken lineage of The Anjuman Yateem Khana Islamia in Kanpur.” About the site of her inquiry, Afreen writes, “The 131-year-old building of the Anjuman Yateem Khana Islamia stands red and opaque at the heart of Chamanganj, a Muslim ghetto in Kanpur. The arched sign over its facade still reads ‘Mohamaddan Orphanage, Cawnpore.’”

As the place where her mother and now deceased uncle spent their childhood, Afreen aims to “visualise and (un)archive the historicity of the building and its residents” as a way of retracing her own inheritance of loss and abandonment.

The project will situate the building in the broader historical stream as a site of protest and of bearing witness to evolving forms of marginality. Afreen’s project plans “not just to engage with the archives but also to question and challenge the way archival creation takes place. It not only explores the historicity of subaltern spaces like the orphanage but also takes a historiographical approach to question how these spaces are remembered and forgotten.”

The line in the title of Afreen's project is from Iqbal’s Urdu poem “Tasveer-e-Dard (The Portrait Of Anguish)” and translates to “this wilderness is the cage, the nest, as well as the garden.”

Afreen Akhtar (she/they) is a q***r Muslim writer and multidisciplinary artist based between Delhi and Bir, Himachal Pradesh. The seeds of their practice lie in marginality, gender identity, intergenerational trauma, the erasure/rewriting of history, and othering.

Read more about the project on our website. Link in bio.

Image: Little Afreen with her mother in a photo studio to commemorate their first Eid, 1998. Courtesy of Afreen Akhtar.

06/01/2026

[New Arrivals in the Reading Room | Donations by Dr. Raj Kumar Mazinder⁣]

As the AAAI Reading Room reopens in the new year, we are delighted to share a selection of publications, exhibition catalogues, and brochures generously donated by eminent artist and scholar Dr. Raj Kumar Mazinder. These materials on recent histories of art, particularly from Assam and other regions, are now accessible to the public by appointment in our office in New Delhi.

Highlights from the donation include:

📚 An Exhibition of Paintings by Hemanta Misra (12-18 March 1969), published by All India Fine Arts & Crafts Society, New Delhi

📚 Exhibition of Paintings & Drawings by Raj Kumar Mazinder (18–20 June 1990) at State Art Gallery, Guwahati

📚 1st Eastern Print Biennale 1995, organised by Eastern Zonal Cultural Centre, Calcutta, Rashtriya Lalit Kala Kendra, Calcutta, and Rashtriya Lalit Kala Kendra, Bhubaneshwar

📚 Undo Objects: An Exhibition of Creative Works (23-29 April 2006) at Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath (Participating artists: Swarupa Shah, Raghavendra Rao KV, Raj Kumar Mazinder, Nikhileshwar Baruah, Manoj Roy, Maneswar Brahma, Laishram Surjit Khuman, Kishor Kumar Das, Debananda Ulup)

📚 Shilpkala: A Journal of Fine Arts (Jan-April 2015), published by Jiban Krishana Shil in Bengali and English

📚 3 Artist: A Group Show of Paintings by Kishor Kumar Das, Laishram Surjit Khuman, and Raj Kumar Mazinder at Kaleidoscope Gallery of Contemporary Art, Vadodara

To visit our Reading Room in New Delhi, please make an appointment through the link in bio.

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