Kumar Shahani
Raza Chair, India
Fellowship : October - December 2015
Discipline(s) : Independent artist (Filmmaking)
Pays : India

L'Institut d'Études Avancées de Nantes est une fondation indépendante, reconnue d'utilité publique, French

Kumar Shahani, (b. 1940) began his filmmaking career with the celebrated Maya Darpan (1972), which made him one of the most significant directors of the New Indian Cinema. He has since made feature films such as Tarang (1984), Khayal Gatha (1989) Kasba (1990), Bhavantarana (1991), Char Adhyay (1997) and Bamboo Flute (2000), which have received wide international recognition. Less well known is his work as a teacher and his interventions as a public intellectual. He has taught in several film schools in India and internationally, made short workshop films with students, and lectured extensively on academic and other platforms.

Atul Dodiya
Raza Chair, India
Fellowship : April to June 2017
Discipline(s) : Independent artist Visual arts
Pays : India

L'Institut d'Études Avancées de Nantes est une fondation indépendante, reconnue d'utilité publique, French

Atul Dodiya was born in 1959, Mumbai,India.

Widely considered as one of India’smost significant artists,Atul Dodiya was trained in Mumbai, at Sir JJ School of Art, 1982 and École des Beaux-Arts (Paris),1991-1992

He became known in the Nineties for hyperrealist paintings depicting middle-class Indian life and for his watercolour series on Mahatma Gandhi. His paintings are populated by diverse traditions in painting, the written words, images from the media and of saints, legends, national history, political events, traumata and autobiograpical narratives. His allegorical paintings on canvas or metal roller shutters and watercolours may be aggressive or poetic.

Atul Dodiya has had more than 30 solo shows in India and abroad, which includes a mid career retrospective at Japan Foundation Asia Centre, Tokyo in 2001, a solo show in Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid in 2002, Contemporary Arts Centre, Cincinnati, US in 2013, a major survey show of his work held at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, 2013.

Participated in Yokohama Triennale,2001, Venice Biennale, 2005 Documenta 12,2007,Gwangiu Biennale, 2008, Moscow Biennale, 2009,Biennale Jogia XI, 2011, Asia Pacific Triennale, Brisbane, 2012, and Kochi Muziris Biennale, Kochi,India ,2012.

Major publications

2001, Curatorial essay by Ranjit Hoskote “Labyrinth/Laboratory: Manufacturing Bombay, Atul Dodiya – style’ in the exhibition catalogue of the mid-carreer retrospective; “Bombay: Labyrinth/Laboratory” The Japan Foundation Asia Center.

2002, Catalogue essay by Enrique Juncosa, “Alegoria, politica y biografia en la obra de Atul Dodiya” (Allegory,policy and biography in the work of Atul Dodiya), for the exhibition “E.T and others”, curated by Enrique Juncosa,Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid.

2013,Catalogue essay by Ranjit Hoskote, “How to Converse With History” a custorial reflection on “Experiments with Truth: Atul Dodiya works 1981-2013, for the exhibition “Experiments with Truth: Atul Dodiya works 1981-2013, curated by Ranjit Hoskote, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Nelhi.

2014 Atul Dodiya, a monograph edited by Ranjit Hoskote, essays by Thomas Mc Evilley, Enrique Juncosa, Ranjit Hoskote and a conversation with Nancy Adajania, published by Prestel and Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi

2016, “An Artist’s Jugalbandi wit Art Viewers: Conversation with Atul Dodiya and Essay as Postcript to the Conversation by Naushil Mehta and Foreword by Tasneem Zakaria Mehta for the exhibition “7000 Museums: A project for the Republic of India” Bhau Daji Lad Museum,Mumbai

Dr Ashis Nandy
Raza Chair, India
Fellowship : January 2023
Discipline(s) : Social Scientist and Public Intellectual

The Raza foundation, India

Ashis Nandy, sociologist and clinical psychologist, has over the years strayed into areas outside formal social sciences and normal academic concerns. His research interests centre on the political psychology of violence, cultures of knowledge, utopias and visions, human potentialities, and futures. Presently he is working on genocide. The running themes in his work have been concern and respect for marginalized categories and systems of knowledge and a robust scepticism towards expert-driven, packaged, professional solutions to human problems.

Nandy's books include Alternative Sciences, At the Edge of Psychology, The Intimate Enemy, The Tao of Cricket, The Illegitimacy of Nationalism, The Savage Freud and Other Essays in Possible and Retrievable Selves, An Ambiguous Journey to the City, The Romance of the State and the Fate of Dissent in the Tropics, Time Warps, Time Treks, and Traditions, Tyranny and Utopias. He is also a co-author of The Blinded Eye: 500 Years of Christopher Columbus and Creating a Nationality; editor of Science, Hegemony and Violence and The Secret Politics of our Desires; and a co-editor of The Multiverse of Democracy and The Future of Knowledge and Culture: A Twenty-First Century Dictionary.

Nandy is a Distinguished Fellow of the Institute of Postcolonial Studies, Melbourne, and a member of the Global Scientific Committee for Higher Education (UNESCO). Over the years, he has been also associated with initiatives such as the Centre for Ecology and Food Security, New Delhi; People’s Union of Civil Liberties, the Committee for Cultural Choices and Global Futures, Delhi; Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, and the Intercultural Institute of Montreal.

Nandy received the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize in 2007 and was chosen one of 100 top public intellectuals in the world in 2008. He received the Hans Killian Award in 2019.