Grants

Our annual Catalyst and Engage Art Grants support Goa-based practitioners by offering monetary assistance, mentorship, and regular feedback on their artistic practice. These grants also provide an opportunity for public presentation of their work. The Engage Grant specifically focuses on artists working on community-based art projects.

Grantees 2024-25

Divyesh Undaviya

Divyesh uses charcoal on paper to create dramatic landscape drawings reflecting on his personal experiences of living and working in Goa.

Kiran Tamboskar

Kiran blends art and technology to create immersive new-media projects which reflect on our human psyche and inner emotions, in an age of voyeurism and media spectacle.

Pragya Bhagat

Pragya is a poet and writer, who explores narratives of witchcraft, magic and feminist stories from the margin through her multimedia project.

Shilpa Mayenkar Naik

Shilpa attempts to capture the disappearing cultures of Goa, often depicting plants, flowers and everyday objects. She works with ceramics to create a sculptural installation of the ‘ovala’ flower.

Shyam Pahapalkar

Shyam utilises natural materials like tree gum, bark and wood apple pulp to create relief sculptures that explore Goa’s hidden stories and syncretic histories.

Sumit Naik

Sumit is a highly skilled charcoal artist who creates large scale photo-realistic portraits. His project pushes his drawing towards paper sculpture, experimenting with form, volume and sketching.

Studio Button
Engage Grant

Studio Button works with stop motion animation as a form of art therapy to empower troubled or displaced communities. Their project ‘Manu and the Golden Fish’ was created in collaboration with the girls of Isha Kripa Sadan - a shelter home for girls in distress.

Meet the artists mentors for the 5th edition of the Catalyst and Engage Grant.

The Mentors

Q

Q is a filmmaker, rapper and entrepreneur, popularly known for addressing complex socio-political issues through films like Love in India, Gandu and Garbage.

Subodh Kerkar

Subodh is an artist and activist whose practice includes visual art, video, performance and land art. He is the Founding Director of Museum of Goa (MOG).

Nandita Kumar

Nandita is a new media artist who works at the intersection of art, science, technology and community to create interactive installations.

The projects resulting from the grants were showcased at an exhibition titled 'Shadow Script' at Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts

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Grantees 2023-24

BGirl Project

Engage Grant

Led by BGirls Jo (Johanna Rodrigues) and FlowRaw (Deepa Singh), the BGirl Project passionately believes in the transformative power of women connecting with one another through movement. Their project engages a group of young women from Aldona in dance and ‘breaking’ as a form of expression and confidence building.

Otherworlds

Otherworlds is a collaboration between architects Arko and Sohil Soni. Their project focuses on creating temporary urban architecture that can serve as a space for leisure, fun, play, learning, and reflecting on the changing nature of Goa’s urban landscape.

Ali Monis Naqvi, Rah Naqvi & Srishti Roshan

Ali, Rah and Srishti are three artists who come together to create a project which explores themes of identity, and persecution on the basis of otherness. Film and ceramic installation are their chosen medium of display.

The projects resulting from the grants were showcased at the Goa Open Arts Festival 2024, Old GMC, Panjim

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Grantees 2022-23

Manashri Pai Dukle

Manashri investigates myths, rituals and beliefs through her practice. For her project she uses oral histories, personal memories and objects to unpack traditional women’s journeys in Goa - from birth to marriage.

Pratik Tushar Naik

Pratik assembles digital renders, animation and mixed-media installation to create a transportative experience that reflects upon the essence of society and its constructs.

Purvai Aranya

Purvai uses the form of the graphic novel, personal stories, photographs and memory to delve deep into bittersweet terrain of dealing with loss and grief.

Subhash Sajja

Sajja blends modular synthesis with orchestral voices to create an AI-assisted sound installation where the audience becomes the conductor. The work uses gesture control, listeners shape harmonies, textures, and timing.

Venkatesh Pai

Venkatesh’s work uses oil paintings, video and sculpture to create surreal landscapes populated by odd plastic creatures and cloudy skies. The artist embraces incoherence and humour, inviting viewers to look freely without seeking a specific purpose.

UnSchool by Hafsa Bukhari & Rashmi Baruah

Engage Grant

Unschool Goa is a 10-week, art-led program fostering socio-emotional learning in children The project worked with a group of 20 children of migrant labour in Parra, to explore identity, community, and imagination. Rooted in process over product, Unschool nurtures confidence, creativity, and critical thinking—empowering children to engage meaningfully with themselves and the world.

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The projects resulting from the grants were showcased at an exhibition titled 'Echoes' at Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts

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Grantees 2021-22

Akshay Parvatkar

Akshay is a filmmaker, who observes societal structures through his work. His Konkani language film looks at how a close friendship between two young boys quickly disintegrates over differences of caste and class.

Farah Mulla

Farah uses sensorial interfaces in an attempt to deploy a language that gives form to intangible and varied materials. Her research and art practice explore the space between sensory thresholds, where harmony isn’t present in the environment but fabricated by our cognition.

Rai & Savyasachi Anju Prabir

Rai and Savyasachi collaborate on an immersive storytelling project about Rakhondars - or the spirits that guard borders of villages in Goa. The project also addresses the current context of insider-outsider negotiations in Goa.

Sanayvi Naik

Sanayvi’s creates fragile paper-mâché forms, animated by gliding mechanisms, to question symbols of land, ownership, and authority. His work reimagines borders as unstable, shifting, and participatory.

Urna Sinha

Urna practice studies maps, boundaries and gestures to examine memory, viewership, and the politics of what is seen and lost. Through bookmaking, print, and fabric, she investigates erasure and absence—archiving what’s missing.

Vinita Baretto

Vinita’s photography explores the connection between space and time, examining the polarities of ‘longing’. By addressing the work through a personal voice, her visual approach imposes several complementary voices and leaves room for interpretation.

The projects resulting from the grants were showcased at an exhibition titled 'Boundaries' at Sunaparanta Centre Goa for the Arts

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The Aldona Community Collaborative

Engage Grant

Awarded to artists Conrad Pinto, Eveny Luis, Isa Hinojosa, Blaise D’Sa, Flavia Lobo for a collaborative community mural in the village of Aldona. The work engaged children and students from the local schools, who were encouraged to reflect upon the natural, rural and urban intermingling of the village, and develop their own imaginative mural.

Grantees 2020-21

Afrah Shafiq

Afrah creates hybrid forms by bringing together text, sound, animation, code, interactivity and the handmade. For her project, Afrah investigates the story of Mother Mary and Shantadurga through their histories, songs, festivals, the people who love them and their dreams.

Asavari Gurav

Asavari’s work draws from various different points of reference, often using inspiration from popular literature and theatre, and also makes reference to the socio-political conditions of Goan culture and folktales. Her research is presented via watercolour paintings, art books and wall hangings.

Bhisaji Gadekar

Bhisaji works with sculpture, simultaneously integrating other mediums like site-specific installation and performance art. For his project, Bhisaji creates a series of sculptural installations based on traditional skills of craftsmanship that have now changed with modern technology.

Komas

Komas is a three-piece band/artist collective led by Enit Maria, Minam Apang & Srinivas Mangipudi. Responding as artists as well as citizens to the fast-track forest clearances in Goa, Komas brings to life a sound/music/visual composition with the forest of Mollem as a living entity.

Poonam Pandit

Poonam is a textile-artist whose work is rooted in local handloom traditions to revive the heritage craft through contemporary design. Her project draws upon social, cultural and environmental narratives of fibre, originating from the primitive world into the technological future .

Nandita Kumar

Nandita is a new-media artist who works at the intersection of art, science, technology and community. For the project, Nandita creates an interactive new media work by deconstructing political statements related to varied environmental issues, which are then put through a code generating “Haiku poems”, to create a chance musical score.

This project is supported by Goethe-Institut Max Mueller Bhawan

The projects resulting from the grants were showcased at an exhibition titled 'Retellings' at Sunaparanta Centre Goa for the Arts

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Meet the artists mentors for the 5th edition of the Catalyst and Engage Grant.

The Mentors

Grantees 2025-26

Rajshree Goody

Q is a filmmaker, rapper and entrepreneur, popularly known for addressing complex socio-political issues through films like Love in India, Gandu and Garbage.

Akshay Mahajan

Subodh is an artist and activist whose practice includes visual art, video, performance and land art. He is the Founding Director of Museum of Goa (MOG).

Nandita Kumar

Nandita is a new media artist who works at the intersection of art, science, technology and community to create interactive installations.

Dnyanesh Moghe

Dnyanesh is a theatre and film director whose body of work spans multiple languages and forms, rooted in a deep commitment to storytelling. His current project dramatizes the life of artist Vamona Navelcar, weaving research and performance to honour a legacy shaped by sacrifice, resilience, and artistic brilliance.

Rajaram Naik

Rajaram is a visual artist whose practice draws from personal memory and regional folk traditions to examine intersections of mythology, masculinity, and popular culture. His work explores how Dashavatara theatre has visually evolved in response to television and pop culture, blending tradition with spectacle to captivate audiences.

Rini Joseph

Rini's practice draws from indigenous ancestry, anti-caste thought, and material memory to imagine pluralistic futures. Her work transforms emotional residues of trauma and identity into forms that embody healing, resilience, and quiet acts of alchemy.

Ritika Singh

Ritika is a visual artist whose practice moves through photography, painting, and mixed media to explore memory, emotion, and personal history. Her work reflects on longing and emotional inheritance, drawing from intimate relationships and the quiet, often unspoken gestures that shape our inner worlds.

Soham Bhende

Soham is a multidisciplinary practitioner whose work draws from observation, memory, and the emotional lives of people and places. His film reflects on Kurdi, a Goan village submerged in the 1980s, exploring its quiet afterlife through voices, silences, and inherited memory.

Thinkarts
Engage Grant

ThinkArts creates transformative arts experiences for children and young people across India. Their current project engages students aged 13–16 in exploring local histories through creative mapping, conversations, and storytelling, in collaboration with schools in Goa.

The projects resulting from the grants will be showcased at the Goa Open Arts festival, February 2026 to be held at Old GMC, Panjim

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Grants

The Mentors

Grantees 2025-26

Rajshree Goody

Akshay Mahajan

Nandita Kumar

Dnyanesh Moghe

Rajaram Naik

Rini Joseph

Ritika Singh

Soham Bhende

Thinkarts Engage Grant

Thinkarts
Engage Grant