Team

Aazhi Archives
Aazhi Archives (AA) is a collective of artists, curators, writers, critics, and scholars founded in 2022 in Kochi. It has organised exhibitions, workshops, and conversations exploring the cosmopolitan histories and maritime worlds of the Kochi region. Its initiatives bring historians and artists into close dialogue, examining entangled pasts, residual presents, and potential futures across the subcontinent, with a particular focus on Kerala and the wider Indian Ocean. Guided by the mission ‘Art + Knowledge + People’, AA works to connect academic research with contemporary artistic practice, developing projects and knowledge missions that meaningfully engage diverse publics. At the centre of the initiative is the understanding that people are repositories, protagonists, destinations, and custodians of the knowledge generated through these processes.

AA’s objectives include developing itself as a dynamic site of learning and exchange, fostering dialogue with art and academic institutions across continents. It aims to build an expansive archive of sounds, smells, tastes, and textures, a virtual sensorium, alongside a repository of tangible materials such as texts, images, and documents. The collective also seeks to serve as an active bridge between cultural and academic institutions and global art events, positioning itself as a site for art-learning, making, and embodied experience. It cultivates synergies among museums, biennales, galleries, and other cultural platforms to generate shared insights and stimulate international conversations. AA is committed to designing hybrid academic models that combine offline and online teaching, institutional and informal learning, and pedagogic and field-based approaches, thereby creating a knowledge-sharing environment for students and scholars worldwide. Ultimately, its vision is to integrate art, archival practice, and academic study into a long-term, sustainable initiative under an ‘artacademic’ centre dedicated to the production and dissemination of art and knowledge.

Aazhi Archives Directors: Riyas Komu, Krishna Kumar K., C.S. Venkiteswaran, Treessa Jaifer, Zoya Riyas, Afsal Muhammed Siddiq, Vinod V.V.