hun-hunshi-hunshilal

Hun, Hunshi, Hunshilal: Mosquitoes and Manufactured Enemies

Sahil Kureshi Jun 13, 2025

Recently screened at the Kolkata People’s Film Festival, Sanjiv Shah’s Hun, Hunshi, Hunshilal (1992)—an NFDC-financed Gujarati (with some Hindi) language film—defies conventional formulas in mainstream cinema. Instead, it offers a biting commentary on authoritarianism, bureaucracy and societal paranoia through absurdist storytelling and deadpan irony.

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builder-raj
albums

Builder Raj: The Perils of Homelessness in Jai Bhim Nagar

Soniya Pondcar Jun 11, 2025

The struggle of Jai Bhim Nagar’s residents against the builder Hiranandani, who has claimed to own the land, dates back to 2007 when their basti was set ablaze. Seven years later, in 2014, the masses were subject to eviction attempts, which picked up pace again in 2023. By June 2024, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) had demolished the settlements, leaving the residents homeless overnight in the withering monsoon.
myanmar
events

Myanmar: Art in the Time of Transition

Editorial Jun 09, 2025

On Saturday, 24 May 2025, ASAP | art organised a conversation with Nathalie Johnston on Myanm/art—an independent exhibition space, archive and library, which Johnston founded in 2016 in Yangon. In the discussion, Johnston shared her experience of setting up a gallery within an emerging vibrant arts eco-system in Yangon, and of working with artists as they explored the experience of possibility and confronted their own inherited biases in suggesting who partakes in the new nation.
city-of-saints
stories

City of Saints: Ayodhya’s Sufi Dargahs

Asim Rafiqui Jun 05, 2025

The dargahs (Muslim shrines) of Ayodhya are easy to miss. Not only are they relatively simple structures—often no more than a few graves surrounded by stones to demarcate an area of worship—but they are obscured by the many dominating and magnificent mandirs (temples) that define the city's landscape.
on-partitions-community-memory-and-resistance
events

On Partitions, Community Memory and Resistance: In Conversation with Karachi LaJamia

Radhika Saraf Jun 03, 2025

In the second part of this interview with Shahana Rajani and Zahra Malkani, the founders of the arts collective Karachi LaJamia, they share with us the double-edged sword of representation—the violence of mapping as a tool for erasures of indigenous communities while also being a method for enabling community memory, testimony and resistance.
on-violence-dispossession-and-arts-pedagogy
events

On Violence, Dispossession and Arts Pedagogy: In Conversation with Karachi LaJamia

Radhika Saraf Jun 02, 2025

The arts collective from Pakistan, Karachi LaJamia, recently received the Asia Arts Future Award (South Asia). In this two-part conversation with Radhika, they share their early frustrations with the failure of university arts education due to its compliance with architectures of militarisation, leading to decaying infrastructures and disappearing ecologies.
cloth-protects-us
events

"Cloth Protects Us": In Conversation with Jayeeta Chatterjee

Aparna Chivukula May 30, 2025

Over the years, printmaker Jayeeta Chatterjee’s practice has shifted from an interest in architecture towards “those who turn that architecture into a home,” with attention to the complex dynamics that underlie the dailiness of the domestic. In this interview, Chatterjee reflects on the impulses that drive her process of documenting and narrating women’s work and leisure, and the questions that are shaping her ongoing practice.

the-lamenting-waterfall
events

The Lamenting Waterfall: On Shilpa Gupta’s Practice

Pramodha Weerasekera May 29, 2025

Shilpa Gupta’s practice has been dedicated to holding and depicting grief in various forms as her work incorporates sound, neon lighting, photographs, drawings and participatory creative exercises grounded in research.
the-journey-of-a-printmaker
events

The Journey of a Printmaker: In Conversation with Anupam Sud

Adreeta Chakraborty May 26, 2025

Anupam Sud, whose career spans several momentous decades, was recently honoured with the Asia Arts Vanguard Award by the Asia Society India Centre at India Art Fair 2025. In this conversation with Adreeta Chakraborty, Sud reflects on the various conditions—socio-economic, cultural and, infrastructural—that shaped her journey as a printmaker and an artist.
on-representation-dalits-and-mainstream-media
events

தலித்துகளும் மைய ஊடகங்களும்

Stephi Saleth, translated by Sherwin Rodriguez May 22, 2025

எப்போது வன்கொடுமை வழக்கு பதியப்பட்டாலும் அதனை எதிர்த்து தலித்துகள் மீதே பொய் வழக்கு போடும் வழக்கம் நாடு முழுக்க உண்டு! அதுவும் சமீப காலமாக வன்கொடுமை சம்பவங்களில் அதிகளவில் தலித்துகள் மீது “எதிர் வழக்குகள்” போடப்படுகின்றன. இதை காவலர்களும் மாவட்ட நிர்வாகமுமே ஊக்குவிக்கின்றது என்பது தான் மிகவும் கவலைக்குரிய விஷயம். காலங்காலமாக நீதிமன்றங்களில் தலித்துகளுக்கு கிடைப்பது “தீர்ப்பு” மட்டுமே “நீதி” அல்ல என்பதற்கு மரக்காணம் கலவரம் மிகப்பெரிய சான்று.

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adivasi-resistance
stories

Adivasi Resistance: Documenting Protest in Bastar

Nikita Jain May 20, 2025

Bastar is considered to be one of the most militarised zones in the world. For decades, the region has witnessed conflict due to the constant clashes between the national security forces and Maoist groups. However, with the coming of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power in the state’s by-elections in November 2024, the situation intensified following Indian Home Minister Amit Shah’s announcement of the start of ‘Operation Kagar’.
asian-voyages
events

Asian Voyages: The Films of Deben Bhattacharya

Arindam Sen May 16, 2025

In January 2025 at Sinema Transtopia in Berlin, Arindam Sen curated two film programmes and a listening session of ethnomusicologist, archivist, field recordist, photographer, documentary filmmaker and writer Deben Bhattacharya’s films and musical recordings. This essay is an edited version of his introductions to the sessions.
afterlives-of-lekra
events

Afterlives of Lekra: Authoritarian Regimes and the Erasure of Bandung’s Spirit

Fathimah Fildzah Izzati May 15, 2025

Turang (Comrade, 1957), was banned and its creator exiled and imprisoned under Soeharto’s authoritarian regime. The film portrays the anti-colonial struggle in Indonesia, and emphasises collective care as essential to sustaining resistance, in alignment with the spirit of Bandung.
turang
events

Turang: On Cultural Revolution and People’s Liberation Struggle in Indonesia

Fathimah Fildzah Izzati May 13, 2025

Turang (Comrade, 1957) is a long-lost Indonesian film by leftist director Bachtiar Siagian, whose work and life were violently disrupted by Soeharto’s New Order regime. This film was created just two years after the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference (AAC) in Bandung. Appropriately, it was screened on 24 April 2025, at the Barbican Cinema in London, exactly seventy years after the Bandung Conference.
acts-of-curation
events

Acts of Curation: On Artists for Artists

Upasana Das May 10, 2025

Experimenter’s 16th anniversary show Artists for Artists was curated by three of the gallery’s represented artists, namely Sohrab Hura, Rathin Barman and Bhasha Chakrabarti. Together, they brought in four other artists—Rai, Aishwarya Arumbakkam, Sathish Kumar and Rupali Patil, none of whom had previously exhibited at the gallery. This practice is a highlighting of artists as friends, coworkers and mentors, and what that does to each other’s practice.
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