The Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, along with TAKE on Art, is pleased to announce that Premjish Achari has been selected as the winner of Art Writers’ Award 2021.

Premjish Achari is a curator and art critic based in Delhi. Achari has initiated an in-depth curatorial platform called Future Collaborations aiming at theoretically and politically informed curation. He is the co-curator of Bhubaneswar Art Trail 2018. Achari currently heads the programme and the editorial for the exhibition ‘Lokame Tharavadu’ organised by Kochi Biennale Foundation and teaches art history and theory at Shiv Nadar University.

In this year’s very competitive edition, our jury reviewed compelling applications over several weeks. We would like to thank jury members Parul Dave-Mukherji (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi), Iftikhar Dadi (Cornell University, New York), Övül Ö. Durmusoglu (UdK Graduate School, Berlin), Bhavna Kakar (TAKE on Art & Latitude 28), and Akshay Pathak (Pro Helvetia New Delhi) for their support.

This edition’s research residency will take place at Atelier Mondial, Basel—a city with rich cultural heritage, diverse range of cultural activities, many museums, and renowned contemporary architecture. During his time in Switzerland, Achari will conduct a research on the collaborative social practices in contemporary Indian art vis à vis the Swiss context.