ASAP Turns Five
We are delighted to announce the release of the e-publication to mark ASAP’s five year anniversary, ‘ASAP Newspaper: Celebrating Five Years of Cross-Border Collaborations and Shared Learning’
ASAP Newspaper looks back at the organisation’s journey thus far, as a facilitator and champion of South Asian modern and contemporary visual and applied arts. This publication is a moment for reflection from our team members, shedding light on the core ideas and foundation of ASAP, on grants and programmes that allowed the team to actualise the organisation's goals, and on ASAP’s promise to continue developing its core mandate developing research, archiving, publication and professional development moving forward. The publication invites some of our grantees to elaborate on the projects they developed with ASAP’s support and guidance, clearly indicating the value these initiatives bring to the larger arts landscape. And allows for the opportunity to hear from our partners, supporters and friends on their understanding of ASAP’s work/role as leaders and professionals working in this field.
The e-publication is free to download and we hope to bring these stories in the physical book form soon.
E-publication
ASAP Newspaper: Celebrating 5 Years of Cross-Border Collaborations and Shared Learning
Designer: Deepesh Sangani
Editor: Kuhu Kopariha
Featured in this Newspaper:
Who Are We? ASAP’s Journey Thus Far | Page 8 - 19
Art South Asia Project’s Team Members: Nour Aslam (Founder and Executive Director), Smriti Mehra (Founding Member, former Programme Manager), Mala Yamey (Founding Member, former Programmes Curator) and Kuhu Kopariha (Programme Manager), reflect on the organisation’s inception and projects in the last five years. Together, they describe the developing nature of ‘South Asian modern and contemporary art’ and how ASAP responds to these developments. The authors reveal how ASAP has taken shape collaboratively and has continuously grown through dialogue with other members and partners from the region and its diaspora.
Reflections on ASAP Grants, supporting projects from 2021 - 2025 | Page 24 - 41
ASAP Grantees contribute essays on their archival work, exhibitions and publications developed between 2021 and 2025. In Glass Eye as Infrastructure: New Methods in Reading South Asian Photography, Kaamna Patel (ASAP Grantee 2023 - 2024) explores the ideas behind the podcast series, Glass Eye: A Podcast on South Asian Visual Culture. Kaamna defines the podcast’s unique position as a critical space for discussion on the photographic practices in South Asia, especially as the hosts/ researchers of the podcast are themselves artists.
Saving Karachi (One Thesis at a Time) by Seher Naveed and Veera Rustomji (ASAP Grantee 2023 - 2024) gives us a glimpse into the Urban Repository Archive, developed to preserve IVS Karachi Student’s Thesis projects and collective urban memory. They explore their own relationships with Karachi as artists and present student works from the archive that similarly engage with the socio-political conditions of the city.
Sayrat Salekin, Researcher at Drik Picture Library (ASAP Grantee 2022 - 2023) shares with us her Fieldnotes from Bandarban, May 2025. In Indexes of Belonging: The Gallery That Looked Back, Sayrat takes us through the many lives of a photograph as it changes hands between research work, exhibition making and public presentation. These inquiries are weaved through historical and contemporary stories from Bandarban.
Writer, Curator and Arts Programmer, Pramodha Weerasekera examines the ASAP’s Publication Grant from 2021 to 2025. Book(ish) Endeavours: Alternative Forms, and Collaborative Imaginariums, discusses Second Volume (2022- 2023), Passages: A Subcontinental Imaginary (2021 - 2022), Glass Eye Podcast (2024 - 2025) and Way of the Forest (2022 - 2023). Pramodha Weerasekera describes each project’s distinct approach to producing art historical discourse on modern & contemporary South Asian art. The essay spotlight’s ASAP’s contribution to the regional discourse.
Testimonials (Page 46 - 59)
We invited partners, supporters and friends to shed light on what ASAP means to them, their experience working with ASAP as partners and what they would like to see from us in the future.
Contributors:
- Anita Dawood, Publisher and Editor, ASAP Advisory Board, UK
- Saskia Fernando, Founder of Saskia Fernando Gallery, Colombo, Sri Lanka
- Dr Shahidul Alam, Founder of The Drik Picture Library, Dhaka, Bangladesh
- Veeranagakumari Solanki, Independent Curator and Writer based in Mumbai, India
- Salima Hashmi, Artist and Researcher based in Lahore, Pakistan
- Sneha Ragavan, Senior Researcher at Asia Art Archive in India, New Delhi, India
- Chloe Austin and Leah McGurk, Visual Arts Relationship Managers, British Council, UK
- Sophia Balagamwala, artist and co-founder of Darham/Marham in Karachi, Pakistan
- Sulakshi Ratnayake, Programme Manager, Young Feminist Network, Colombo, Sri Lanka
- Lisa Darms, Archivist, Educator and Writer, New York, USA
- Sadia Rahman, Head of Arts Bangladesh, British Council Bangladesh
- Munem Wasif, Artist, Curator and Educator based in Dhaka, Bangladesh
- Anshika Varma, Artist and Founder Director of Offset Projects, New Delhi
- Sona Datta, Curator, Writer and Broadcaster, ASAP Advisory Board, UK