Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation is delighted to announce that the inaugural Mrinalini Mukherjee Creative Arts Grant jury consists of Nancy Adajania, Ranbir Kaleka, and Gulammohammed Sheikh.

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Nancy Adajania is a cultural theorist and curator based in Bombay. She was Joint Artistic Director of the 9th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2012). She has curated a number of pathbreaking exhibitions including, most recently, ‘Woman Is As Woman Does’ (CSMVS Museum with JNAF, 2022), a first-ever intergenerational mapping of the works of Indian women artists, filmmakers and activists against the backdrop of the women's movement in India. Adajania's other major research-based exhibitions include the Navjot Altaf retrospective, ‘The Earth’s Heart, Torn Out – Navjot Altaf: A Life in Art’ (National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, with The Guild, 2018), and the Sudhir Patwardhan retrospective, ‘Walking through Soul City’ (NGMA, Mumbai, with The Guild, 2019). One of Adajania’s key preoccupations is the retrieval of artistic positions that have been marginalized from canonical accounts of Indian art history. In this spirit, she has curated ‘Counter-Canon, Counter-Culture: Alternative Histories of Indian Art’, on the pre-history of new media art in India (Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa, 2019) and ‘The Unpaved, Crusty, Earthy Road’, the retrospective of the textile artist and crafts activist Nelly Sethna (Chatterjee & Lal, as part of Cymroza@50, Mumbai, 2021).

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Ranbir Kaleka is a multimedia artist based in New Delhi. Trained at College of Arts, Chandigarh, and later at Royal College of Art, London, as a painter, he soon moved into the realm of moving images and immersive video installations. Kaleka was awarded the National Award by the President of India at the 22nd National Exhibition of Art, Lalit Kala Akademi Delhi (1979). In 2007, he was invited by Spertus Museum in Chicago to create a Holocaust Memorial, for which he created a site-specific video installation with oral testimony from Auschwitz. Recent shows include those at Goethe Institut Max Mueller, Mumbai, 2022, Palazzo Madama, Turin, Italy, and ‘Delirium-Equilibrium’ curated by Roobina Karode, KNMA, New Delhi (2021). Other significant shows include ‘Moving Still: Performative Photography in India’, curated by Gayatri Sinha and Diana Freundl, Vancouver Art Gallery (2019) and The Fotofest 2018 Biennial, India/ Contemporary Photography and New Media. Houston, Texas.

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Gulammohammed Sheikh is an artist, writer and educationist. In his tenure as teacher of Art History and Professor of Painting at Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara, he has contributed to a renewed understanding of cross cultural themes in artistic pedagogy, in an Indian and international context. Sheikh bridges a historical appreciation of art and art practice with an engagement with contemporary socio-political concerns. Sheikh taught Art History (1960-63 and 1967-81) and was Professor at the Department of Painting (1982-1993) at the MS University of Baroda, Gujarat. He has been Visiting Faculty at the Art Institute of Chicago, USA (1987 and 2002) and Visiting Fellow at Delhi University (2004). He has participated in workshops and residencies in India and internationally at Montalvo, California, USA, (2005), South Asia Regional Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA (2000) and Civitella Ranieri Center, Umbertide, Italy (1998) etc.

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His solo exhibitions from 1961 include Mappings, The Guild at Museum Gallery, Mumbai (2004); Palimpsest at Vadehra Gallery, New Delhi and Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai (2001); Kahat Kabir at Vadehra Gallery, New Delhi (1998); Returning Home (a retrospective of work from 1968-1985) at Centre Georges Pompidou, Musee National d’Art Moderne, Paris (1985). He was founder member of Group 1890 in 1963. Sheikh has participated in several group exhibitions: Chalo India, A New Era of Indian Art, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2008); Contemporary Art from India, Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago (2007); Edge of Desire, curated by Chaitanya Sambrani, shown at New Delhi and Mumbai (2006), New York, Mexico City, and Berkeley, California (2005) and Perth, Australia (2004); Sheikh has lectured widely on Indian art in Europe, U.K., USA, Australia etc Sheikh has been awarded, the Padmabhushan in 2014, the Padmashri in 1983 by Government of India in 1983, Kalidas Samman by the Madhya Pradesh Government in 2002, Ravi Varma Puraskaram by Government of Kerala in 2009. In 2010 he was conferred D. Litt. by Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata.

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The artist lives and works in Vadodara, Gujarat.