ASSEMBLING ART ARCHIVES: WORKSHOPS FOR SOUTH ASIA

Art South Asia Project (ASAP) is partnering with Asia Art Archive in India (AAAI) to host Assembling Art Archives: Workshops for South Asia, a 10-month online programme dedicated to archiving modern and contemporary art from South Asia. This initiative, the first of its kind in the region, aims to foster learning, collaboration, and knowledge exchange on archival methodologies, frameworks, and infrastructural techniques. Sessions will be led by archivists working across diverse institutional contexts in the Global South and beyond. Assembling Art Archives has been made possible with a grant from Hauser & Wirth Institute.

This workshop stems from the burgeoning interest towards the building of archives, by individuals, collectives, arts organisations, and artist estates working broadly within the field of modern and contemporary visual art from South Asia. When reflecting back on Mughal history, archiving achievements were not only through written and visual documentation, but surrounded itself through the arts and cultural landscape of the period. This is how we as South Asians have developed to define our history and our identities. With this context in mind, Assembling Art Archives seeks to explore the manifold possibilities involved in archiving diverse collections, while acknowledging that there are issues pertaining to constrained resources and infrastructures that pose challenges. The workshop seeks to tackle these and other issues collectively as various individuals and institutions work towards building their own archives.

The workshop hopes to enable participants to develop a conceptual frame for the building of archives, alongside developing technical skills pertaining to the information architecture of archives. It directs participants to think critically of the archive as a system for collating, organising, and presenting diverse materials, with a focus on those engaging with the holdings of arts institutions and/or artist estates. The workshop will also encourage participants to think through the question of accessibility, and its central role in determining the forms, infrastructures, potential use, and creative reinterpretations of the archives, and how we may navigate these terrains.

Commencing in August 2025, Assembling Art Archives is designed for professionals engaged in archiving within arts organisations, artist estates and studios, and independent arts spaces. A maximum of 20 participants will be selected through an Open Call from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The online workshops will be complemented by an in-person gathering in Nepal in November 2025, providing a unique opportunity for participants to connect and deepen their engagement with archival practices.

“This programme fosters collaboration and knowledge exchange across diverse archiving practices and will play a crucial role in shaping the future of art archives in South Asia,” says the ASAP and AAAI team. “By connecting archivists and participants from the region and beyond, Assembling Art Archives will help to build a network of professionals committed to advancing archival processes in the arts.”

Learn more about the open call in Opportunities