Filling the arts funding gap

Meet Aprajita Jain, one of the most important figures in the Indian contemporary art scene who promotes some of the biggest artists of our time like Subodh Gupta, Anita Dube, Thukral and Tagra, Jitesh Kalat... through her Delhi-based gallery Nature Morte. What makes her contribution to the art world special is her ability to give curators and museum directors abroad the research grants, through her NGO Saat Saath Arts, to travel to India to understand art and also archive information for the future.

“I like to support my generation. In Nature Morte we work with artists like Thukral and Tagra, Subodh Gupta and Anita Dubey. We support pretty much all the contemporary artists of this generation whom we believe in. We go after content. For me it is all about work, which will be relevant in 100 years from now. If it won’t be relevant that means we failed with that artist. We are working with the infrastructure of art,” she says.

Beneficiaries of the Saat Saath Foundation should actually thank tigers, because it was born out of the need to save these majestic beasts. “Saat Saath began with the initiative Art Tiger. We needed a foundation to route money for the Ranthambhore Foundation to save tigers,” says Jain, who helped raise funds through art.

Once the goal was reached, she realised that the art world too needed help. While she was deliberating on what to do, Jain spoke to her friend Diana Campbell, the curator at the Dhaka Art Summit, who advised her on doing something more substantial than just holding an art fair.

“Diana and I were discussing the problems with Indian art and how it was viewed internationally. She told me that nobody knew how to navigate in our country. Foreigners who come here get very confused, they don’t  know how to deal with it in a week. They feel you need at least a month in India, and honestly it is not possible for people to take so much time off.

“She said instead of doing one art fair, why don’t I fund research grants? This was validated by the museums. A couple of my friends there said if you give us grants we would love to come because our museums don’t have money any more. Funds internationally have dried up. They will fund exhibitions and other things but not research trips,” says Aprajita.

What makes things worse is that nobody archives or documents anything here. So, how do people get to read up on the subject?  “For example when we study Indian art history in international institutions, there is a lot of information on Indian antiquities, miniatures... there are many scholars on the subject, museums collect these things; but when it comes to contemporary India, there is not much information.”

How did she develop her passion? “Art was drilled into me by my grandmother. Growing up, every couple of days I would be forced to listen to Indian classical music by her, or she would take me to plays or recitals. All trips involved museum visits. At that time it was torture. Listening to a raaga with your grandmother for 30 minutes was torture. But she would tell me you need to learn to recognise it and if you recognise it, you will enjoy it. The more you see, the more it will enrich your life. And by the time you grow older, you suddenly realise that you are seeking these things.”

Growing up in a home where the walls were filled with works by Rabindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose, N.S. Bendre, Jamini Roy and other great artists also helped install a love for art from a young age. Aprajita says her grandmother, who was collecting from the age of 19, only bought art, no jewellery and certainly no designer goodies that were passé the next season.

“When you grow up in a home surrounded by beautiful art, and there is constant conversation about it, you imbibe it,” she says. At 21, Aprajita began building her collection. “My first piece was a Bose Krishnamachari. I arm-twisted my husband Gaurav to buy it. He too loves art. This was our piece. My personal first piece was a Prabhakar Kolte, which I eventually sold. It was a bad decision.”

Gazing at amazing works the whole day seems awesome, but like any field, art too comes with a lot of niggles. “The perils of our business are meltdowns — artists are insecure or have not been able to finish their works,” confesses Aprajita.

Talking about a heart attack inducing moment in her career, she reveals, “Once there was a show by one of our artists, Aditya Pandey. This was six or seven months after I had bought into Nature Morte. I had never hung any works till then as my partner Peter Nagy always did it. He is an American and his visa got rejected so he couldn’t come. Everyone then suggested that I hang the works. The artist had not finished the large wall works he was supposed to do. I had to beg, plead, scream, and shout... We did open the show but the last of the drawing finished just half-an-hour before the show.”