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 thinking 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.

25/08/2026

【New Arrivals in the Reading Room | Publications on Media Art】

In the lead up to the Digital and Media Art Festival organised by the Goethe Institut New Delhi in collaboration with AAA in India, we are excited to share some publications on media art that we received through donation from ZKM | Center for Art & Media Karlsruhe, Germany and Sarai-CSDS, New Delhi, India for AAA in India's Reading Room.

Highlights include:

📚 A Little-Known Story about a Movement, a Magazine, and the Computer’s Arrival in Art: New Tendencies and Bit International, 1961 – 1973 (2011), edited by Margit Rosen, traces the emergence of and explorations with computers in art and visual research through the pivotal New Tendencies movement and bit international magazine in Zagreb, formerly Yugoslavia, along with its historic influence on art movements in the twentieth century.

📚 Art in Motion. 100 Masterpieces with and through Media: An Operative Canon (2025), edited by Seigfried Zielinski and Peter Weibel, is both an exhibition catalogue and an anthology that undertakes an investigation into constructing a critical genealogy and tracing global networks of media art practices from a re-defined notion of the ‘masterpiece’ or ‘reference work’.

📚 INC Etherport #4: Fragments of Tactical Media (2026), edited by Chloe Arkenbout et al., explores the smaller and more distributed webs of global resistance with a particular focus on the urgent and mutating nature of tactical media looking at a select repository of alternate networks, projects, and infrastructures such as Radio alHara, Permacomputing, Learning Palestine, and Avantwhatever.com.

📚 Critical Zones: The Science and Politics of Landing on Earth (2020), produced alongside the exhibition ‘Critical Zones: Observations for Earthly Politics’ and edited by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, brings together in collaboration artists, scientists, historians and philosophers to articulate the disorientations in a world experiencing climate change and re-imagine geopolitics of life forms on the planet.

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.

05/08/2026

[Highlights from AAA's Collections by Noopur Desai, Researcher, AAA in India]

Initiated in 1993, the Asia Pacific Triennial (APT) has been a gathering ground for contemporary art from East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. Looking back at APT 2 (1996) and APT 3 (1999) through archival materials from Asia Art Archive, what stood out for me was how the Triennial became a space where networks of women artists across South and Southeast Asia could emerge at a moment when conversations around gender in art were just beginning to take root in the region.

AAA's online repository, particularly its event database, made these constellations visible. As I wandered through this database (link in bio), unexpected intersections surfaced: Mrinalini Mukherjee, Nilima Sheikh, and Nalini Malani crossing paths with Ellen Pau, Eng Hwee Chu, Chen Yanyin, Marintan Sirait and Arahmaiani during APT 2 in 1996; or Sona Bai, Madhvi Parekh, and Rummana Hussain sharing space with Durriya Kazi, Shahzia Sikander, Simryn Gill, Fatimah Chik, Wu Ma-Li and Amanda Heng at APT 3 in 1999.

The archival materials reveal that the Triennial became a space where women artists presented alongside one another, experimented with new forms, and engaged in shared conversations through presentations, installations, talks that may have shaped future practices and networks. These documents invite us to reflect on exhibitions not only as sites for displaying art, but also as spaces where conversations, solidarities, and artistic networks are formed.

All images are from Asia Art Archive's collection.

15/07/2026

[Delhi by DESIGN: Part II– Manoeuvres Around the Masterplan | AAA in India, New Delhi | On view till 16 October, 2026]

We are delighted to share some close-up shots from Part II of our ongoing exhibition series, ‘Delhi by DESIGN: Manoeuvres Around the Masterplan’. Drop by our office space to trace the city’s diverse histories—from the historical Seventh Delhi of Shahjahanabad, through the colonial capital of New Delhi, to the city-state of an independent nation.

Exploring urban planning, infrastructure, and ecology through the lens of the city’s masterplan, we present a variety of materials from Design magazine (1957-1988), including maps, editorials, timeline, critical writings, architectural drawings, photographs, and cover designs. These examine spaces such as the Central Vista, Diplomatic Enclave, the Ridge and the Yamuna River, and are juxtaposed with a specially curated selection of publications that question and intervene in the centralised and zoning-led planning discourse while foregrounding more entangled ways of living in and inhabiting the city.

We would like to thank F**A Reading Room, Toxics Link, Sarai-CSDS, and Indie Comix Fest Collection for generously lending the publications for this exhibition.

The exhibition will be on view until 16 October 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.

Photo: Sumedha Gupta

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.

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