“Hey, what’s your exact age?”, I asked a female artist friend some time ago – “Don’t get me wrong, but there’s this residency open call and I wondered whether to send it to you…”. Of course, it turned out that she had crossed the golden age of 40, and therefore was ineligible to apply for the prescribed advancement of her professional and conceptual artistic life. In general, finding anything that caters to above 35’s is difficult. And this should not be the case, because so much churning and learning happens during those mid-career years and after.
Many will agree that the matter of residency and grant applications (whether Indian or International) is not a comfortable one to discuss. There is a lot of grumbling and criticism about the complexity of the asks, the irrelevance of imagining projects within unknown places and spaces, and the cumbersome task of using good English (yes, most do not accept alternatives) while fitting everything into a specific word count.
How many of those boxes we have filled, instilling the words with all the desire we have for that selection. But the regret letters come in easier than the ‘you are the winner!’ ones.
Some of the grant-making bodies do not acknowledge applications or send announcement notes, and others may even pump up the numbers through invitations if the gathering of good applications seems a little thin.
Things have not changed much in the past decade and half; the only difference is that ChatGPT and the likes have furnished applicants with some tools for creating legible content. And I call it content because it is rarely unforced, truthful speech. I continue to get requests to help with phrasing, editing, rewriting, demystifying questions and suggesting the best approaches to proposal development.
As a mentor I do this willingly, with a wish that they may have a greater opportunity – but the ratio of applicants to grants is always so skewed, sometimes it’s easier to put it down to ‘luck’. This is not to say that truly deserving candidates do not get selected (I am happy to know many of these); it is just that for the one or two that do, there are so many meritorious others who do not, repeatedly, until they give up hope. (And the ones that do, often get selected again, and again.)
Having written applications for myself, helped many to write theirs over the years, having given recommendations and also been on the jury side of such exercises – I understand fully that there are certain basic requirements that need to be fulfilled, and a level playing field must be created in order for the cycle of democratic processes to function. The evaluation of ideas, thought processes, accountability of work, as well as gauging the strength of personality and vision has to be done through the words and images packed into a PDF (of a strictly mentioned size). It is sad however, that it is definitely not a level playing field out there. The jargon-filled open calls frequently cause confusion, fear and self-doubt, rather than a supportive and hopeful scenario. How do we create an equitable ecosystem when there is a persistent exclusion and invisibilisation due to language, caste, region and religion, gender, age, motherhood/parenthood status…Where do we begin to fill in these gaps in a highly competitive space when many of the applicants have minimal writing skills, are handicapped in multiple ways, and have limited means to overcome this? The pressure of applying results in the best of them resorting to recurrent ‘cut-and-paste’, regurgitating ideas and stagnancy of thought in order to fit in with the current agenda.
Even after several polite rejections over the years, I remain the eternal optimist. I dream of that wonderful curatorial residency that has no age limit, that will allow me to bring my son along, and that only needs me to buzz in my face for entry – just like the digiyatra app for travel that my assistant convinced me to get onto!
Lina Vincent