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FOUNDERS

ASHISH

SAHOO

Ashish Sahoo is the Co-Founder and Director of Maze Collective Studio. Ashish was born into a filmmaker’s family in Orissa, surrounded by celluloid cans and chemicals as he was growing up. After pursuing B.F.A. in sculpture from Shantiniketan where he was introduced to the history of art and photography, he began experimenting with various early photography techniques. He researched one of the mid-18th-century processes of photography called wet plate collodion glass Negatives.

 His recent projects have attempted a crossover between photography, art, and collaboration, with a strong contextual reference to contemporary urban narrative and the politics surrounding it.

www.ashishsahoo.in

ZAHRA

YAZDANI

Zahra Yazdani is the Co-Founder and Head of programs adviser at Maze Collective Studio.

Zahra Yazdani is a visual artist based between Iran and India.

She graduated in painting from Sooreh Art University in Tehran. She has exhibited her works in three solo exhibitions and several group shows. Her practice is centred around narrating situations of crisis, struggle, and trauma by focusing on life experience and observation, and is highly influenced by fantasy, the subconscious and dreams. Using early 19th-century photographic processes, she creates an atmosphere blurring the borders between painting and photography, representing an ethereal, bizarre visual narrative between reality and illusion.

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

BASANTA

SAHOO

Basanta Sahoo is a highly accomplished filmmaker from Odisha, with over 46 years of experience in directing feature films and documentaries. He has received numerous awards and honors, including state awards. Sahoo has also served on the advisory board for the Odisha Film Development Corporation and the Biju Patnaik Film and Television Institute, and was formerly the chairman of Film Archive and Vice President of the Utkal Literature Festival.

ASHWANI

KUMAR

Ashwani Kumar is a poet, author, editor, curator and professor at Tata Institute of Social Sciences Mumbai. Widely published, anthologized and translated into several Indian languages, his major poetry volumes include ‘My Grandfather’s Imaginary Typewriter’ and ‘Banaras and the Other’, and ‘Architecture of Alphabets’ in Hungarian. Kaláka Ensemble by the Hungarian band has performed his Banaras poet @ Times Literature Festival (Mumbai) and G5A Foundation for Contemporary Culture, Mumbai. Recently, he has edited ‘Rivers Going Home’, a major anthology of Indian poetry.

He is author of the acclaimed non-fiction ‘Community Warriors” (Anthem Press; London), and one of the chief editors of ‘Global Civil Society’ at London School of Economics and ‘Migrants, Mobility andCitizenship in India (Routledge 2021). He has served as the jury of fiction for Tata Literature Live 2020, and co-founder of Indian Novels Collective, an initiative to popularize translation of classic novels of Indian languages. He is also cocurator of prestigious Chandrabhaga Poetry Festival @ Odisha and member of Advisory Board of BADAL- Bastar Academy of Dance & Literature, Government of Chhattisgarh, and one of the Asia’s Feature Five’ poets to Asia Pacific Translator’s Translator Fest 2019.

He is also a visiting fellow at leading global universities and think tank including London School of Economics, German Development Institute, Korea Development Institute, University of Sussex, Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology. In his policy advisory role, he has served as member of Central Employment Guarantee Council (Govt of India), and done monitoring of implementation of MGNREGA in more than twenty states in India. In leisure, he writes columns in the Financial Express, Outlook India, the Hindu, Times of India among others. He has a PhD in political science from University of Oklahoma (USA).

LOVLINA

SAHOO

Lovlina Sahoo is a high court lawyer with a background in classical singing. She has performed at national venues with prominent artists before pursuing law. She also teaches at M.S Law College as a visiting faculty member, training aspiring lawyers.

OUR SUPPORTERS

 

  • MurthyNAYAK Foundation

  • Shyama Foundation

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

Since the beginning, we have grown as a collective of friends and supporters who always stood with us no matter what. We won’t be able to grow without their support in various forms.

  • Anshika Varma

  • Asim Waqif

  • Deepak Yatri

  • Damian Christinger

  • Gayathri

  • Himanshu Bablani

  • Indrajit De

  • Indranjan

  • Khoj Studios

  • Mrinal Bahukandi

  • Nilanjan Chowdhury

  • Offset Projects

  • Poshali Goel

  • Ravi Agarwal

  • Srinivas Kuruganti

  • Sunanda Pathak

  • Tanya Maheswari

  • Vrinda Aggarwal

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