Generator Grantees | Round 8 | August 2024

Experimenter Labs announces the eighth round of recipients of the Generator Cooperative Art Production Fund. We are proud to support projects by Anuja Dasgupta, Ashima Raizada, Bunu Dhungana, Gyanwant Yadav, Jubin Das, Mahila Zine, Muskaan Singh, Panjeri Artists’ Union, Pankaj Sarma, Pranami Rajbangshi, Samarth, Sheshadev Sagria, Vanshika Babbar, and Yogesh Barve. The eighth round of applications were evaluated by curator Akansha Rastogi, artist Sanchayan Ghosh, and artist Shubigi Rao, with the Experimenter team.
Anuja Dasgupta (She/ her)

Anuja Dasgupta (b. 1996) is a visual artist, educator and agri-preneur. She situates her practice in the elementary aspects of image-making through camera-less, analogue photography, bookmaking, and mixed-media installations.

The grant will support research, production and an artist book of her project, Nima Skyot Duk / The Sun is Setting, which is a phyto-photo eco-memoir of Ladakh, echoing the larger web of ecological interdependence in the trans-Himalayas.

Anuja Dasgupta is based in Ladakh, India.
Ashima Raizada (She/ her)

Ashima Raizada (b.1994) is a visual artist. Her artistic practice involves an experimentation with the mediums of photography, mixed media and painting primarily rooted in everyday observations and concepts of philosophy.

Ashima will use the grant to continue her project and produce an artist book on, 29, Empty your cup, a personal visual essay based on her experiences with autism and neurodiversity. Through this essay, her aim is to shed light upon lives that are different.

Ashima Raizada is based in Punjab, India.
Bunu Dhungana (She/ her)

Bunu Dhungana’s (b. 1981) practice engages with personal, familial, and social realms, questioning the notions of gender and patriarchy through photography, film, text, and curation. Her process is intuitive.

The grant will support her film, खेलौं रत्यौली (Let’s Play Ratyauli), a film about the playful and vanishing tradition of Ratyauli, which creates a space for women to express themselves freely during Hindu weddings in Nepal.

Bunu Dhungana is based in Kathmandu, Nepal.
Gyanwant Yadav

Gyanwant Yadav (b. 1992) is a visual artist whose practice is based in the agrarian— exploring material and methods used in farming.

With the support of the grant, Gyanwant will create a project which delves into the plight of farmers during the Yamuna river floods. He will interact with the farmers and document the landscape to think of collective responses within the community. By repurposing material collected from the riverbank and migrant communities, into new forms, he will highlight the organic values of the region. He plans to develop installations at these sites, using materials like soil and farmers’ tools.

Gyanwant Yadav is based in Uttar Pradesh, India.
Jubin Das

Jubin Das (b. 2002) is a visual artist who is currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Printmaking at the Government College of Art and Craft in Guwahati.

With the help of the grant he will make works and an artist book for The Fisherman Project, which aims to understand river systems, its changes and their replenishment. It focuses on preserving traditional fishing tools and techniques.

Jubin Das is based in Assam, India.
Mahila Zine

Mahila Zine, (e. 2018) published by an artist collective named Vichar K Achaar, is a feminist publication aiming at gender equality. It voices the experiences of women artists in the form of visual narratives, sequential art, comics, and art works, and is currently coordinated by Manmeet Sandhu and Gunjan Singhal.

They will use the grant to publish the tenth issue of their zine, which will be a collection of visual narratives on the theme of ‘We Are Not Settled’ in a book format. The selected narratives will share biographical/ autobiographical experiences, anecdotes, opinions, struggles or adventures of women artists in their journey as creative practitioners highlighting the alternative systems they have created for survival and attaining their dreams.

Vichar K Achaar is based in New Delhi, India.
Muskaan Singh

Muskaan Singh (b. 1991) completed her postgraduate studies at Shiv Nadar University in 2018. Her work integrates humour and vernacular expressions to explore complex political themes, drawing inspiration from her cultural roots.

With the support of the grant, she will create a video art project based on her recent wedding, highlighting social and emotional human values through performative elements, traditional attire, objects, and local literature.

Muskaan Singh is based in New Delhi, India.
Panjeri Artists’ Union

Panjeri Artists’ Union (e. 2022) is a union of a variety of creative practitioners who see themselves as critical observers and navigators crossing the stormy seas of contemporary socio-political existence enveloped in the liminality of turbulent identities.

Panjeri Artists’ Union will use the grant to produce three video-sculptures which conceptualises the murmurs of history within the social body of displaced communities of long partition, surviving at the crossroads of their shifting citizenries inhabiting the fringes of Bengal’s borderlands.

Panjeri Artists’ Union is based in West Bengal, India.
Pankaj Sarma

Pankaj Sarma (b. 1993) is a multidisciplinary artist whose evocative work spans diverse media, including filmmaking. He examines anthropogenic changes in the landscape and solastalgia, creating immersive experiences that resonate with personal and collective memories.

The grant will support Joraxal, a docu-fictional short film that delves into the geography and ecology of the sal forest, ‘Joraxal’, in the Rani Reserve Forest in Assam, and the evolving dynamics of interactions between humans and the nonhuman world.

Pankaj Sarma is based in Assam, India.
Pranami Koch

Pranami Koch (b. 1995) is a queer, indigenous multimedia artist from Assam’s Koch community. She often draws from lived experiences, explores gender and identity politics, with a keen interest in archiving and exploring the extensions of memory.

With the support of the grant she will further work on Koro Gochongni (Echoes Within), a film to rebuild the severed connection between the artist and her ancestral tribal identity as a Koch woman.

Pranami Koch is based in Assam, India.
Samarth

Samarth (b. 1997) is an artist, graphic narrativist and arts educator. He works with sequential art and comics under the pen name of ‘roeqin’.

Generator will be supporting Samarth in the production of a graphic novella about the forest fires of Uttarakhand. Partly fantastical, partly allegorical, the story is an attempt at delving into landscapes ravaged by forest fires and making sense of its impact on the region, people and the ecology through fiction. This work will be the first in a series of short graphic fiction of contemporary narratives from Kumaon.

Samarth is based in Uttarakhand, India.

Photo credit: Aditi Kim Karolil
Sheshadev Sagria

Sheshadev Sagria (b. 1996), is a visual artist who pursued BFA from Khallikote and MFA in printmaking from MS University, Baroda.

Generator will support his project to develop an alternative ethnographic method to study and build narratives about his community, focusing on disease, caste, labour, tools, habitat, and their interconnectedness and how that impacts our bodily evolution. His project centres around the water bodies in the rural areas of his region, particularly ponds by creating site-specific installations around ponds. The outcome of this ethnographic research will be interactive dioramas which will be further explored with printmaking, sculpture and drawing.

Sheshadev Sagria is based in Odisha, India.
Vanshika Babbar

Vanshika (b. 1998) is an artist working with video installations, painting, and zines. Her interests revolve around the condition of middle classness and the absurdities of life under the capital relations.

With the support of the grant, her project Subject/Predicates will look into the processes of self-making by experimenting with deepfake and AR technology; utilising found footage of sloganeering mobs and other mass events.

Vanshika Babbar is based in New Delhi, India.

Photo credit: Arushi Vats
Yogesh Barve

Yogesh Barve (b. 1989) is an artist who uses various media to challenge norms and binaries, creating immersive environments that blend personal and public realms. His work aims to democratise technology and decolonise through art.

The grant will support the production of 15 videos for Dalit Poetry and Literature, a YouTube channel dedicated to making Dalit literary works and cultural expressions accessible. Launched in late 2017, the channel serves as a vital platform for archiving and sharing the rich experiences of the Dalit community, focusing on poetry, literature, folk and protest songs, and public speeches.

Yogesh Barve is based in Mumbai, India.

Photo credit: Saviya Lopes