Call for a Collaboration at Mumbai Art Room

With the generous support of Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation, Mumbai Art Room is happy to hold its second open call addressed to artists and curators all across India. We are inviting project proposals that comprise a collaboration between an artist and a curator to be realised in the form of an exhibition. While the strength of individual portfolios will be taken into account, our interest is primarily in what you will do in coming together and how that is informed by, while simultaneously departing from, what you could do, as artist or curator, on your own. This will typically require an awareness of what you bring to the table by way of your own practices and preoccupations, as well as an understanding of each other’s work.
In preparing to work together, we ask that you re-assess, amongst yourselves, the terms implicit in the artist-curator contract. What do you expect from each other? What function do you feel you ought to perform? To whom are you responsible? To what are you committed? Why? If it were up to you, would you redefine the rules of engagement between the figure of the artist and the role of the curator? How would this redefinition expand the notion of exhibition-making? What implications would that have, if any, for the question of authorship? (We do not expect you to answer these questions directly. Deem them prompts for you to play with and allow them to inspire the shared ground of your thinking.
In your proposal, we want you to tell us what you will do and how you plan to go about doing it. It is important, wherever possible, that you indicate what labour will be shared and also how labour will be divided. (Intellectual labour, like of writing, included.) You may choose, for example, to work more or less independently towards your own objectives, acknowledging that what binds you together, as artist and curator, is simply the space and time of the exhibition. We are open to all forms of artistic and curatorial practice from within the contemporary art context, and are ultimately concerned with what can happen at the place where your trajectories intersect.

THE SELECTED ARTIST AND CURATOR WILL RECEIVE :

• A 10 weeks exhibition at Mumbai Art Room
• An artist fee and a curator fee of INR 10,000 each
• An exhibition budget of up to INR 70,000

Mumbai Art Room will provide critical engagement towards the conceptual development of the project and logistical support towards the production of the exhibition.  We will oversee expenditures and do our best with press coverage.

• Indian citizens, up to the age of 35 years, currently living and working in India
• Open to developing your artistic practice and presenting your curatorial work
• Receiving funding from Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation for the first time

LIST OF DOCUMENTS REQUIRED:

• A completed basic information form
• Curricula vitae, detailing education, solo or group shows, and, or, curatorial projects, if any
• A concept note (250 words max) explaining the terms of the proposed collaboration, and a description of the project (500 words max)
• A provisional budget including estimations for research, production and installation, shipping and travel, not exceeding INR 70,000
• Relevant examples of your individual work
• Check list of submitted work (images, texts, audios, videos, URLs, etc.)

Guidelines for submitting your work :

Images : Submit up to 10, high in quality but small in size (less than 250KB each)

Texts : Submit up to 3 examples, published or unpublished

Audio files : Submit up to 3 examples of up to 10 minutes each

Videos : Submit up to 3, either URLs if available online or use one of the following upload

Please label your files as following: Name_of_the_project_Budget.xls for proposal related material, and Surname_CV.pdf for individual work. Images should include captions and we highly encourage you to submit all visual material in one document / portfolio, rather than separate files, ideally in pdf format.

Please send all links and attachments in one email. The subject of your email should be titled Call for a Collaboration / Name of your project.

Email application materials to : office@mumbaiartroom.org

SCHEDULE :

• The deadline for submissions is 6 July 2017
• Selected applicants will be informed by mid July 2017
• Applicants should make time in their individual schedules to commit to working together and in dialogue with Mumbai Art Room toward the development and realisation of the project during the months of July, August and September 2017
• The exhibition will open late September and run through December 2017

ABOUT MUMBAI ART ROOM

A public charitable trust, Mumbai Art Room exhibits contemporary art, design, and visual culture from India and foreign countries. The organisation provides a non-commercial platform for artistic and curatorial practice, one that is experimental, educational, and as accessible as possible to all audiences. It is registered officially as the Contemporary Arts Trust with the Charity Commissioner’s Office of the State of Maharashtra. For more information:www.mumbaiartroom.org