About

Vishal Kumaraswamy is the winner of the Han Nefkens Foundation – South Asian Video Art Production Grant 2025 presented in collaboration with Prameya Art Foundation, Delhi (India) and in partnership with Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai (UAE); Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (M HKA, Belgium); deCentral, Bangkok and Chiang Mai (Thailand); Para Site, (Hong Kong) and Artspace, Sydney (Australia).

The Han Nefkens Foundation – Southeast Asian Video Art Production Grant aims to be a tool for increasing contemporary artistic production in the video art field and is directed at artists living in South Asia. The Grant involves the production of a video art work. In order to consolidate the candidates’ career, the South Asian Video Art Production Grant appraises the work of artists living in the region of South Asia (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan) who have established a solid trajectory but who have not had the opportunity to exhibit extensively. recognition by important international art institutions.

The final jury was chaired by Mr. Han Nefkens and composed of Anushka Rajendran – Curator at Prameya Art Foundation, New Delhi; Sasha Altaf – Director of Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai; Nav Haq – Artistic Director at Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (M HKA); Punn Chirakiti – Co-founder and Co-Executive Director of deCentral, Bangkok and Chiang Mai; Zoe Butt – Artistic Director of deCentral, Bangkok and Chiang Mai; Celia Ho – Curator at Para Site, Hong Kong; Victor Wang – Director at Artspace, Sydney; Katie Dyer – Senior Curator at Artspace, Sydney. in the presence of Hilde Teerlinck and Alessandra Biscaro, respectively Director and Coordinator of the Han Nefkens Foundation.

Vishal will receive $15,000 for the production of a new work to be completed within nine months. Following nine months, at the end of 2026 Kumaraswamy’s new work will be presented by all partner institutions.

Vishal Kumaraswamy (b. 1988 India) is a multi-disciplinary artist-curator from Bengaluru, India, working across text, film, sound, performance, and computational arts. Rooted in anti-caste working principles, his practice employs traditional and experimental forms to investigate the entanglements of body, caste, language, technology, and society. He is interested in the power and potential of media technologies to imagine embodied, gestural ways of fostering the further development of Dalit cultural practices. Vishal was the inaugural guest curator at Arts House, City of Melbourne 2023-2024, a co-founder of Now You Have Authority, a collaborative curatorial and infrastructure project and 1/3rd of Indefinite Leave to Remain, a study-friendship with Moad Musbahi and Virgil B/G Taylor.