At the Intersection of Discourse and Practice

Mamta Singhania is an art patron, philanthropist and institution-builder whose work spans over three decades at the intersection of contemporary art, education and social development. She founded Anant Art in 2003, a gallery where South Asian artistic traditions and contemporary experimentation could converge, becoming one of the first private galleries in India committed to transnational dialogue, bringing together established and emerging voices from across the subcontinent and beyond.

In 2023, she established Anant Foundation for the Arts to extend this commitment, building institutional support for arts and culture practitioners, curators and scholars through awards, residencies, curatorial forums and critical writing, ensuring that contemporary art in the region is nurtured through rigorous scholarship.

Her engagement with the arts has always been personal, and grounded in the belief that South Asian contemporary art deserves to be recorded, reflected upon and continuously reimagined.

I firmly believe that contemporary art in South Asia deserves infrastructure that supports practitioners not just at the moment of making, but in the conversations that precede it, the thinking that extends it, and the discourse it returns to.

Anant Foundation for the Arts is an attempt to build that ecosystem, creating conditions for generative dialogue, unhurried material exploration, and critical writing that outlasts the moment the works respond to. The conviction behind this endeavour is not new, but with the Foundation, it finds a new form and ground to grow.

Meera Menezes is an art writer and curator.  She was the Delhi correspondent for the arts magazine, Art India, and has written extensively on modern and contemporary Indian art over the past three decades. She has done her Masters in German Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi and has worked as a TV-journalist and producer at the South Asia Bureau of ARD, Germany’s largest public service broadcaster.

What drew me to supporting the foundation was the opportunity to create a space for discourse and dialogue within the art community. As a curator and writer, I felt it was important to provide a fillip to both curatorial practice and art writing, besides encouraging young artistic talent. AFA is, in many ways, an attempt to do so at an institutional scale.

We are a young organisation. But I think it allows us the freedom to build carefully, to stay close to what matters, and to remain genuinely open to the needs of the art community. I hope we can support a new generation of artists, writers, thinkers and curators with our programming.