ARTS COUNCIL INTERIM REPORT 2018–2019
OUR MISSION The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University (The Mittal Institute) engages in interdisciplinary research to advance and deepen the understanding of critical issues of South Asia and its relationship to the world. Cover Credit: Imagined Immortals by Komal Shahid Khan, Mittal Institute's Visiting Artist Fellow 2016-17
TABLE OF CONTENTS Arts Program at the Mittal Institute Pg. 4 Providing platforms for South Asian Artists Pg. 6 Furthering research and engagement amongst Harvard Scholars Pg. 14 Forging partnerships with Arts Institutions Pg.18 Our Impact Pg. 20
The Arts program at The Mittal Institute connects South Asian artists with Harvard faculty and students for the purpose of supporting research that advances the understanding of social, political, cultural, and economic issues of the world through art. For the 2018-19 academic year, we have pledged to deepen engagement and expand the activities of the Arts program. Our goals include - hosting mid-career artists from across South Asia for a three-month fellowship at Harvard, advancing the understanding around conservation of South Asian arts through collaboration with leading art institutions in South Asia, continuing to fund faculty and student research and travel grants, and establishing a 'named' arts conference and/or seminar series. On many of these fronts, we have made significant progress in the June-December 2018 period. Our Visting Artist Fellows for the Fall 2018 semester are currently in Cambridge and making robust progress on their projects. Importantly, we extended the duration of the Visiting Artist Fellowship to three months to include an additional one-month working in the country with the intention of giving the artists time to reflect and write about their fellowship at Harvard. We initiated efforts towards building partnerships with arts institutions by hosting a workshop on arts conservation with a leading museum in Mumbai, India. We have also continued to extend grant-based support to faculty and students at Harvard to further their work and engagement with South Asian Art. The following sections of this report discusses this progress in greater detail.
ARTS @ MITTAL INSTITUTE
The Arts program is led by Professor Jinah Kim, Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University.
TEAM UPDATES
SHILPA SANGER JOINS THE ARTS COUNCIL
SUNIL HIRANI JOINS THE ARTS COUNCIL
Shilpa Sanger is an entrepreneur, angel investor and orthodontist. Since 2014, she has been a member of Golden Seeds, one of the nation’s largest and most active investment groups, seeking and funding high-potential, women-led businesses. She founded Rhea Arts in 2001 to promote emerging and talented Indian artists in the US and also collects South Asian art and functional art objects (collaborating with artists to create unusual pieces). She also manages the Sanger Family Foundation and Sanger family office. After completing her Master of Dental Surgery in Orthodontics (1986) from Bombay University, she held a private practice in Orthodontics from 1987 to 1999. She is actively involved with Pratham USA, one of the largest educational NGO’s and is a member of their Tristate Board.
Sunil Hirani is the co-foudner and CEO of trueEX Group LLX and the co-founder of Digital Asset Holdings, trueDigital Holdings, and truePTS. Sunil was also CEO of Creditex, co-founding the firm in 1999 and selling it to Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) in 2008. He was also a co-founder of T-Zero, which was sold alongside Creditex to ICE. Prior to Creditex, he was in the swaps and derivatives area at Deutsche Bank and Bankers Trust.Over the past 15 years, Sunil has led several successful technology start-ups that have operated on the leading edge of technology, and modernized and transformed financial trading. Sunil received an M.M. from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a B.S. from Washington University. Sunil is a prolific, passionate collector of South Asian art.
2018-19 Arts Council Interim Report
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Ali Sethi speaks to a packed room at the Barker Center
Providing
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Samsul Alam discusses his artwork with a guest during the art exhibition’s opening reception
Sonny Mehta at a discussion on the Riyaaz Qawwali ensemble
Ali Sethi interacts with an audience member
g a platform for South Asian artists One of the primary goals of the Arts program is to support artists working in the South Asia region and to provide a platform for them to showcase their work internationally. A related goal is to expose the Harvard community to the multifaceted world of art emanating from the South Asia region. The primary mechanisms through which we support such engagements are through our Visiting Artist Fellowship and Arts Seminars.
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VISITING ARTIST FELLOWSHIP ABOUT THE VISITING ARTIST FELLOWSHIP
The Visiting Artist Fellowship (VAF) brings four emerging or mid-career artisits from South Asia to Harvard’s campus to deepen their inquiries through research. During their time on campus, artists attend classes relevant to their work, meet with student groups, give a lecture, and display their work. The Visiting Artist Fellowship has grown exponentially since its launch in 2015-2016. It has also undergone significant changes, primarily with regard to its duration. What began as a one-week engagement is now a three-month long fellowship which includes two months in Cambridge and one month in the country of his/her work. ADMISSIONS PROCESS AND SELECTION CYCLE
The Visiting Artist Fellowship invites applications from artists working in the South Asian region whose work spans photography, painting, documentary/ film making, and a variety of other artistic mediums and traditions. In the 2018-19 admissions cycle of the Fellowship, we received over 70 applications. Applications comprise a work portfolio, an artist statement, a fellowship proposal and recommendation letters. A review committee selects candidates taking into consideration the applicant's experience, the quality of the portfolio and written statements and also demonstrated capacity for productive scholarship. Attention is paid to the geographic and thematic spread of applicants and fellowship proposals. Four artists are selected each academic year to be part of the Visiting Artist Fellowship.
70 Applications 5 Countries 4 Visiting Artists
MEET OUR 2018-19 ARTISTS!
AMAN KALEEM Fall 2018 INDIA
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SAMSUL ALAM Fall 2018 BANGLADESH
MAHBUB JOKHIO Spring 2019 PAKISTAN
KRUPA MAKHIJA Spring 2019 INDIA
AY 2018-2019 VISITING ARTISTS
Colored Feet
A piece from Runaway Lovers
FALL 2018 AMAN KALEEM INDIA
FALL 2018 SAMSUL ALAM BANGLADESH
Aman Kaleem is the founder and CEO of Kahaani Wale, a social impact communication organization. She is a Young India Fellow and has been recognized by the Government of India and United Nations as ‘Make a Difference Leader’, for her work in the South Asian region.
Samsul Alam Helal is a photographer based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He completed his graduation in photography from Pathshala South Asian Media Institute. His recent work Love Studio depicts the portraits of a working-class community where an old studio in Dhaka transforms into a neighborhood venue to represent the dreams, hopes and desires of the factory workers, their families and unemployed neighbors. In another portrait series on Hijra (transgender community), the camera hones in on the unfolding drama, nothing but a short razzmatazz, that reads like a narrative, and exotic hieroglyphic as the protagonists represented make dancing and singing for an absent audience, or as an end in itself. Helal loves to make fiction to question the reality. His aim is to go beyond the sociocultural and political issues which are primary interests. He explores identity, dreams, longings and plays with the psychological realm of these issues to understand the deeper marks it creates. Helal’s work represents a reality in an alternate space. In his recent practice he does photography, video and installation.
Her best-known film, Shaadi, Sex Aur Parivaar (Marriage, Sex and Family) premiered at International Film Festival Madrid and is currently being screened in festivals across the world. It contains significant autobiographical elements and draws on the lived experiences of a single woman in India. In the documentary, three very different women describe the social, economic and personal challenges of choosing a life partner in India. Currently, she is creating an online repository of protest movements across South Asia. At Harvard, she will be pursuing a project to create a platform for immersive spatial experiences, that would bring the viewer on the same stage as the protagonist.
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ARTS SEMINARS The Arts seminar series is funded by the Donald T. Regan Fund and brings artists, scholars, and historians together to showcase South Asian art. The varying mediums include film, performance, sculpture, and paintings all centered around critical issues of the region.
Sonny Mehta shares the Riyaaz Qawwali story
Aastha Goswami
SEPTEMBER 26, 2018
OCTOBER 10, 2018
THE RIYAAZ QAWWALI ENSEMBLE: A JOURNEY OF CULTURES AND FAITHS THROUGH QAWWALI
AUTUMN MOON: AN EVENING OF HINDUSTANI MUSIC WITH AASTHA GOSWAMI
Sonny Mehta, Artistic Director and Founder, Riyaaz Qawwali
Aastha Goswami, Musician
Chair: Ali Asani, Professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic Religion and Cultures, Harvard University
Celebrated Hindustani musician Aastha Goswami performed at an intimate concert on Harvard's campus.
The Riyaaz Qawwali ensemble was established on a college campus in the United States 12 years ago. Since then, it has toured the country and also debuted in Europe in 2017. Artistic Director and founder of Riyaaz Qawwali, Sonny Mehta, shared his personal story from learning classical music to performing qawwali, the musical genre commonly associated with the Sufi tradition in South Asia. He demonstrated the basics of qawwali, unfolding the relevant musical elements, poetry and important performance aspects. With the backdrop of the history of qawwali in the US, he shared Riyaaz Qawwali’s journey and how the ensemble has found its voice through performances – breaking, in the process, cultural and religious barriers.
Aastha Goswami received her music training from the prestigious ITC Sangeet Research Academy in Kolkata where she trained under the tutelage of Pandit Arun Bhaduri and the legendary Padma Vibhushan Smt. Girija Devi Ji.
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Performing for more than 20 years all over India, with numerous awards and honors to her credit, Aastha is based in Vrindavan, the cultural-spiritual center of Krishna worship. Deeply entrenched in the famous Kirana (Gharana) classical musical tradition of Hindustani music, she has also immersed herself in the stream of Devotional music. While her repertoire showcases traditional classical compositions, she enriches her performances with a rare collection of compositions of the Braj region celebrating Krishna and the seasons of devotion.
ARTS SEMINARS
Screening of 'Shaadi, Sex aur Parivaar'
Guests look at artwork during the opening reception of the VAF arts exhibition
OCTOBER 23, 2018
OCTOBER 29, 2018
SCREENING AND DISCUSSION OF 'SHAADI, SEX AUR PARIVAAR'
SHAPING THE ORDINARY THROUGH LOVE AND DREAMS, SOUTH ASIAN PERSPECTIVES VISITING ARTIST FELLOWSHIP: ART EXHIBITION OPENING RECEPTION
Aman Kaleem, Film maker and Mittal Institute's 2018-19 Visiting Artist Fellow Delhi-based filmmaker Aman Kaleem’s screened her documentary on the institution of marriage through the perspective of three Indian brides. The characters explore the ideas of love, body image, and identity while seeking liberation for themselves.
Aman Kaleem and Samsul Alam, Mittal Institute's 2018-19 Visiting Artist Fellows This reception marked the inaugration of a month-long exhibition showcasing the artwork of our Fall Semester Visiting Artist Fellows.
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ARTS SEMINARS
Aman Kaleem and Samsul Alam with Jinah Kim at the VAF Panel Discussion
Kabi Raj Lama talks about using art as a form of healing
OCTOBER 30, 2018
NOVEMBER 3, 2018
IN FOCUS VISITING ARTIST FELLOWSHIP: PANEL DISCUSSION
TRAUMA AND MEMORY - HEALING THROUGH ART
Aman Kaleem and Samsul Alam, Mittal Institute's Fall 2018 Visiting Artist Fellows Chair: Jinah Kim, Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University The Mittal Institute hosted a panel discussion with our Fall Semester Visiting Artist Fellows on capturing identity, everyday life and activism in South Asia through the digital lens.
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Kabi Raj Lama, Artist and Printmaker As part of the Artist Talk in our India Seminar Series, we collaborated with the Lalit Kala Akademi (LKA), Govt of India, to host Kabi Raj Lama, a Nepal-based artist and printmaker as well as a former Visiting Artist Fellow at the Mittal Institute. Kabi Raj had two direct experiences confronting traumatic natural disasters: the 2011 Tsunami in Japan and the 2015 Gorkha earthquake in Nepal. The talk touched on the artist’s realization that mental health is often ignored in the process of rebuilding after a natural disaster, and how art can be used as a form of healing from trauma.
ARTS SEMINARS
Ali Sethi discusses Sufi traditions
One of the Van Vechten photographs of Ram Gopel
NOVEMBER 14, 2018
NOVEMBER 16, 2018
FROM LAHORE WITH LOVE
TRANSCULTURAL ATTRACTIONS: AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHS OF AN INDIAN DANCER
Ali Sethi, Musician and Author Chair: Ali Asani, Professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic Religion and Cultures, Harvard University ‘From Lahore With Love’ was a lecture-cum-demonstration by musician and author Ali Sethi that revealed the many ways in which Sufi poets and musicians have encoded a subversive ambiguity into South Asia’s religious-cultural ethos, one that continues to empower experiential forms of knowledge while confounding the attempts of state, corporate and global forces to appropriate Sufi poetry and music for hegemonic goals.
Ajay Sinha, Professor of Art History, Mount Holyoke College Chair: Jinah Kim, Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University In the Spring of 1938, an Indian dancer, Ram Gopel, posed in a variety of fantastical costumes for the American photographer, Carl Van Vechten, in New York City. The remarkable images, now part of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscripts Library, Yale University, show traces of the myriad, transcultural relations being performed during the photoshoot. Studying over 100 large-size photographs resulting from the photoshoot, the lecture built an illustrated story of their mutual fascination and exchange, triggered by the camera.
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Professor Jinah Kim with students
Furthering re
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A chord diagram showing the overlap of tools and technologies used by home-based workers in India and Cambodia, Winter grant research project
Student group discussion
Curators of the Student Research Art Exhibition
esearch and engagement amongst Harvard Scholars An integral component of our work is to provide support, including grant-based financial support, to faculty and students at Harvard studying and researching South Asian art. Our goals are manifold – to deepen engagement with existing research, to support development of new areas of research in this fairly nascent field, and to help with its dissemination at Harvard and beyond.
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FACULTY GRANTS
Jinah Kim at CSMVS
Narayan Khandekar discusses the Forbes collection
TRACE symposium
AUGUST 2018 JINAH KIM GARDNER COWLES ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
AUGUST 2018 NARAYAN KHANDEKAR DIRECTOR OF THE STRAUS CENTER FOR CONSERVATION AND TECHNICAL STUDIES AND SENIOR CONSERVATION SCIENTIST
DECEMBER 2018 JINAH KIM GARDNER COWLES ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
The Mittal Institute supported Professor Jinah Kim's travel to Mumbai, India to present a lecture entitled 'Color and Pigments in Indian Painting' at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) on August 10, 2018.
The Mittal Institute supported Dr. Narayan Khandekar's travel to Mumbai to present his work on the Arts and Science of the Forbes Pigment Collection at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) on August 10, 2018.
Color experience is highly subjective, and color terms pose semiotic challenges. A fluid semantic range in Sanskrit makes it even more challenging to identify which color a color term denotes. Here, the data gleaned from scientific analysis of pigments and the study of material and physical aspects of paintings as objects can help unpack the role of artists in shaping the way we see color. Identifying pigments in use in Indian miniature painting and reading them in close comparison with the colors discussed in theoretical texts and artistic treatises, afford us a glimpse into artists’ intimate, embodied knowledge of each color’s material properties. This talk demonstrated how efforts to contextualize the analytical data on pigments with art historical questions can help advance our understanding of color and pigments in the history of painting beyond a matter of confirmation of a pigment’s use.
In his talk about the Forbes Pigment Collection, he discussed the reasons why Edward Waldo Forbes started collecting pigments, how the collection grew, new additions to the collection, and how it is currently being used through case studies from the activities of the Straus Centre for Conservation and Technical Studies.
Professor Jinah Kim received a Mittal Institute grant to organise a symposium on 'Trace: Artisanal Intelligence, Material Agency and Ritual Technology in South Asian Art' on December 7-8, 2018. The symposium will bring together scholars whose research embraces methodological interventions and theoretical implications of art history’s material turn in the field of South Asian art and architecture, mostly focusing on the period between 500 CE and 1500CE. Thematically organized, papers will demonstrate how attending to thingness and the process of making helps reveal hitherto invisible connections across time and space. Going beyond the rubric of material agency, papers will also explore the importance of considering somatic intelligence and ritual technology that developed to activate power and sacrality of objects and buildings in Indic religious contexts. Further consideration of ritual knowledge helps situate the trace of time left in matter through artistic mediations in historical and experiential contexts.
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Narayan Khandekar leads the Straus Center’s conservation and research activities, as well as those for the Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art. Specializing in the scientific analysis of paintings and painted surfaces, he has published extensively on the subject. He curates the Forbes Pigment Collection and the Gettens Collection of Binding Media and Varnishes.
STUDENT GRANTS
Rachel Parikh, Harvard Art Museums
Student summer grant recipients
SEPTEMBER 2018 RACHEL PARIKH CALDER WOOD CURATORIAL FELLOW OF SOUTH ASIAN ART, HARVARD ART MUSEUMS
SUMMER 2018 STUDENT SUMMER GRANT RECIPIENTS (* Funded through other sources)
In September, the Arts Fund supported Rachel Parikh in her research travel to Kuwait and Doha to conduct research for her book on South Asian arms and armor. ‘The Power of Protection: The Material Culture of South Asian Arms and Armor’, to be published by Bloomsbury Press (2020) will serve as the first foundation text on the subject of South Asian Arms and armor. It will focus on objects from throughout the sub-continent between the sixteenth and late nineteenth century. From different contexts, it will demonstrate that arms and armor served many purposes that go beyond the battlefield.
The Mittal Institute awarded 22 grants to support student projects over the Summer Session 2018. These include 17 graduate students and 5 undergraduate students who travelled to India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar, and Pakistan for research and internships. 6 of these grants - listed below - relate to the arts*.
As part of the trip, Parikh made trips to The Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, and the Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah (Al-Sabah Collection), Kuwait. Doha and Kuwait contain two of the largest collections of South Asian arms and armor in the world; and combined, host nearly two thousand objects that are directly related to Parikh’s research. Neither institution provides digital access to their collections. The Mittal Institute’s grant provided Parikh an opportunity to see these objects in person and examine the works first-hand which allowed her to make assessments of the materials used, how the object was made and meant to be used. Parikh was also able to meet and consult with conservators to learn more about the construction of the objects and the different techniques used to decorate them.
Andy Lee, Masters in Urban Planning ’19 Summer Intern at The Bengal Institute for Architecture Landscapes and Settlements Ciara Stein, Masters in Urban Planning ’19 Summer Intern at The Bengal Institute for Architecture Landscapes and Settlements
Maung Nyeu, EdD Candidate ’20 Research Project: “A Literacy Intervention Using Cultural Resources of Linguistic Minority Indigenous Students” Aniket De, PhD Candidate in History ’22 Research Project: “Territories of Belonging: A Peoples History of Borders in Modern South Asia” Catherine Hartmann, PhD Candidate in the Study of Religion ’19 Research Project: “To See the Invisible Wonders: Vision, Place, and Writing in Tibetan Pilgrimage Literature” Edwin Leonardo Pãrraga, Masters of Education ’18 Summer Intern at Children’s Art Museum of Nepal
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Professor Jinah Kim at a group discussion during the conservation workshop
Forging
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This year, we initiated efforts to build partnerships with institutions engaged in and supporting South Asian art. Our hope is that such continued and expanded collaboration with a diverse range of actors will help stimulate conversation and support for arts-related issues in the region.
CHATRAPATI SHIVAJI MAHARAJ VASTU SANGRAHALAYA (CSMVS), INDIA ART CONSERVATION INITIATIVE WORKSHOP, AUGUST 2018 South Asia has an almost incomparably rich heritage of artistic works but many have been allowed to deteriorate or even disappear over time. The Mittal Institute is now working with Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), formerly known as the Prince of Wales Museum of Western India, on a major art conservation project, to encourage and empower custodians from all over the region to protect their vital archives.
Art conservation initiative workshop participants
Image depicting conservation work at INTACH
Image depicting conservation work at INTACH
Our first activity under this collaboration was to host a two-day event around art and heritage conservation in India. The Conservation Initiative workshop brought together conservators and curators, with a variety of specializations, to discuss the state of art conservation in India. Academics and practitioners (including Harvard professor Jinah Kim and the Straus Center's Narayan Khandekar) from both public and private institutions participated in a productive discussion on the status of conservation, conservation training and implementation,
STUDYING ART CONSERVATION PRACTICES IN INDIA - In an effort to deepen our engagement with the issue of conservation, Meena Hewett, Executive Director of The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, undertook a visit to INTACH's conservation laboratory
and how to collaborate in future. According to Vinod Daniels, Head of Cultural Heritage and Science Initiatives at the Australian Museum, museums and conservation are not a high priority in the country, and conservationists must pick one substantial, sustainable aspect to work on. S. Girikumar, a private practitioner, noted that communication and collaboration between conservators and institutes needs to be better because if an institution does not have labs or resources, there are other institutions that do have the right facilities. Satish Pandey, Associate Professor at the National Museum Institute, also mentioned the lack of communication between scientists, art historians, fine arts experts and conservators. Shikha Jain, Director of Preservation and Community Design at Dronah, emphasized the importance of proper research and needing to build an umbrella agency of conservators and others in the field, through a private-public partnership. The discussions were productive and timely. The Mittal Institute will continue to collaborate with CSMVS and other institutions to further the aims of art conservation in India.
in Lucknow, India to study first-hand the state of conservation science in India for a variety of heritage objects ranging from manuscripts to animal skins and to understand the progress being made in developing services in conservation to art collectors.
partnerships with Arts Institutions
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Visiting Artist Rajyashri Goody during a Mittal Institute VAF trip
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Samsul Alam at the opening reception of the VAF arts exhibition
Muang Nyeu's books: Student summer grant project
Pre-Texts training program participants
Our Impact
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VISITING ARTIST FELLOW TESTIMONIALS
Muang Nyeu reads from one of hi
MILAN RAI VAF 2015-16
KABI RAJ LAMA VAF 2017-18
FAIHAM EBNA SHERIF VAF 2017-18
The VAF inspired me to apply to more art residencies and fellowships. I had realized the potential of such programs and the impact they have on my art practice. Therefore, I kept applying! Despite receiving both acceptance and rejection letters, the VAF helped me to become more confident and determined. After returning from the VAF, I also noticed a shift in people’s perception of me. People in Kathmandu were curious about how a high school dropout could make it to Harvard! I began to receive invitations to speak about my work at colleges and universities, which was a powerful platform for me to tell my story to young people.
Harvard has provided me with an important platform to share my personal story and experience of disaster-related trauma. I have been able to share both my artwork and my process by presenting at Harvard, leading a Japanese Woodcut workshop at Harvard’s Bow and Arrow Press, and presenting my work at Alfred University. I was fortunate to have been able to visit the Muskat Print Studio, Mixit Print Studio, and Boston University Print Studio. Furthermore, the people I have met at Harvard have suggested exciting new ideas about incorporating scientific research into my practice.
It has been an incredible opportunity to be able to access Harvard’s library and museum resources as a researcher and to dig deeper into my studies. It is difficult for me to access comparable archives and libraries as a freelancer. Additionally, Cambridge is a cosmopolitan area where I have met people from different areas of the world. It has been fascinating and helpful for my journey as an artist.
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STUDENT VOICES
CHITTAGONG HILL TRACT CHILDREN’S BOOKS PART OF HGSE COMMENCEMENT TRADITION IN 2018 For nearly twenty years, new graduates of the Harvard Graduate School of Education have been carrying and waving children’s books as they enter Harvard Yard for the commencement ceremony. This tradition emphasizes the importance of children’s literacy and inclusion, as the books represent different cultures from around the world. This year amongst copies of The Hungry Caterpillar and A Snowy Day will be several copies of Harvard Doctoral Candidate Maung Nyeu’s children’s books. These multilingual books are based on stories collected by children of Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Bangladesh. The books contain moral and civic values and the wisdom of generations and help revitalize endangered languages and revive vanishing cultures. Nyeu’s project is possible due to funding from The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute for his travels to mountain villages of Bangladesh to visit schools and collect stories. The funding enabled him to publish and distribute books in Bangladesh. So far, he has distributed over 10,000 of these books to children who never owned a children’s book in their lives.
is books at the Spring Arts Exhibition
NEETI NAYAK GSD '18
SHELIZA JAMAL HGSE '18
ANUSHKA GHOSH HGSE '18
I’m working on a degree in master’s in design engineering, and we have a heavy focus on interdisciplinary work. While I was doing my research, I realized that there were a lot of art projects that were tangential to the research that I was doing. However, I couldn’t really talk about them when I was doing my thesis project. I wanted a way to showcase the arts-based side of my project… To be interdisciplinary, you have to present your work in a way that is digestible by a lot of disciplines. And that’s why being visual is the most important thing [in bringing it to other audiences]. I chatted with Amy [at SAI] and she liked the idea, and we decided to do something about it.
As a third-generation Indian, I often feel a dissonance between the four identities that I hold. One of the reasons I applied to the internship with the Mittal Institute was to feel a sense of belonging and connection to South Asia. My personal interest in identity and belonging sparked my investigation of a heterogeneous South Asian identity within the North American framework. As part of my research project, I created a photo gallery called Photo IDX.
I really enjoyed interacting with the visiting artists and getting to know more about their work. It was fascinating to know more about the way people innovate through the medium of art and communicate with a broader audience about issues that are so central to the South Asian experience, especially when presented through art forms that speak volumes about this experience.
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THE MITTAL INSTITUTE ADMINISTRATION
ARTS COUNCIL
ADVISORY COUNCIL
CAMBRIDGE Tarun Khanna, Director; Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, HBS Meena Sonea Hewett, Executive Director Emma Fitzgerald, Administrative Assistant Selmon Rafey, Program Coordinator Hasit Shah, Communications Affiliate Sneha Shrestha, Arts at The Mittal Institute Project Manager
Faculty Director: Jinah Kim, Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University
Syed Babar Ali, (AMP ’73, Pakistan) KP Balaraj, (MBA ’97, India) Sumir Chadha, (MBA ’97, USA) Kuntala and Purandar Das, (USA) Mark Fuller, (AB ’75, MBA ’78, JD ’79) and Jo Froman, (USA) Meera Gandhi, (USA) Vikram Gandhi, (MBA ’89, ExEd ’00, USA/ India) Mala Haarmann, (AB ’91, MBA ’96, UK) Anuradha and Anand Mahindra (AB ’77, MBA ’81, India) Karen, (AB ’82) and Sanjeev Mehra, (AB ’82, MBA ’86), USA Victor Menezes, (USA) Arif Naqvi, (UAE) Chandrika and Dalip Pathak, (UK) Chandni and Mukesh Prasad, (AB ’93, USA) Sribala Subramanian and Arvind Raghunathan, (USA) Rajiv and Anupa Sahney, (India) Parul and Gaurav Swarup, (MBA ’80, India) Tom Varkey, (MBA ’97) Arshad Zakaria, (AB ’85, MBA ’87, USA)
INDIA Sanjay Kumar, India Country Director Garima Aggarwal, Grant and Finance Manager Savitha Ananth, Program Manager, B4 Saba Kohli Dave, Program Coordinator Farhana Siddiqui, Staff Assistant IN REGION Mariam Chughta, Pakistan Programs Manager Pukar Malla, Programs Consultant, Nepal FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATIVE TEAM (SHARED WITH OTHER ASIA-RELATED CENTERS) Sarah Gordon, Director of Finance and Administration Maryam Mirza Alivandi, Financial Associate Karen Christopher, Financial Associate Kathryn Maldonis, Senior Financial Associate
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Chair: Dipti Mathur, (USA) Arts Program Advisor: Shanay Jhaveri, (USA) Archan Basu and Madeline Jie Wang, (USA) Poonam Bhagat, (India) Anurag Bhargava, (India and USA) Radhika Chopra, (India) Aparajita and Gaurav Jain, (India) Sunil Hirani, (USA) Chandrika Pathak, (UK and India) Pinky and Sanjay Reddy, (India) Omar Saeed, (Pakistan) Sana Rezwan Sait, (USA) Nadia and Rajeeb Samdani, (Bangladesh) Shilpa Sanger, (USA) Osman Khalid Waheed, (Pakistan)
FRIENDS OF THE MITTAL INSTITUTE Anonymous Gobind Akoi, The Imperial Hotel, Delhi The Resource Group, c/o Nadeem Elahi, (Pakistan) Jeffrey Smith, Principal Shareholder, law firm of Greenberg Traurig, LLP, (USA) Anwarul Quadir Foundation
CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge Street Cambridge, MA 02138 USA mittalsouthasiainstitute.harvard.edu