Vilas Travel Funding Information
The spring 2012 Vilas Research Travel Award competition will open on February 1, 2012 at 9:00 AM. Applications for the spring competition will be accepted between February 1, 2012 and February 29, 2012.
Applications for Vilas Conference Presentation Funds will be accepted on a rolling basis beginning 9:00 AM, February 1, 2012. At this time students may apply for conference travel that began or will begin between January 1, 2012 and June 30, 2012.
Winners of the Fall 2011 Vilas Research Travel Award have been announced! This semester the Review Committee awarded five $1500 awards to fund outstanding research conducted outside the contiguous United States, and sixty $600 awards to support domestic and international travel.
Vilas Winner Profile: Pritika Chowdhry
A Master of Fine Arts candidate in Ceramics and Sculpture, Pritika Chowdhry focuses on making socially relevant, large-scale sculptures representing themes of cultural memory. A winner of the International Vilas Travel Grant, Pritika visited Kumartuli, India, an artisan town near Kolkata, to research the annual tradition of making large-scale deity sculptures out of unfired clay and straw.
The tradition is unique in that these sculptures are produced every year for thePooja festival season in the fall. Durga Pooja is a ten-day festival that culminates in a public procession carrying goddess statues through the city to the banks of the Ganges river and then ceremonially immersing them into it. The clay used to make the sculptures is also dug from the banks of the Ganges.
"It was an amazing learning experience to work with and learn from the artisans in Kumartuli. However, in this town dedicated to the creation of protimas or sculptural images of the goddess, I did not see a single woman artisan. When I asked a couple of artisans that I had become close to about this, I was told with a smile that that is just how it is. As a woman artist myself, I want to understand and remedy this situation in some way. Therefore, here in Madison I would like to make feminist sculptures using the process of the Kumartuli artisans. These sculptures will be large-scale, secular in content, and will question gender roles in society," says Pritika.
The knowledge and insights Pritika gained about indigenous arts and artistic traditions of India not only inspired her in making the sculptures for her MFA thesis exhibit, but also inspired her to return to graduate school to pursue an M.A. degree in Visual Culture and Gender Studies; she will focus her studies on the visual cultures and history of South Asia.
Pritika’s upcoming solo exhibit in the Class of 1925 gallery in the Memorial Union is titled “Silent Waters.” It will feature a site-specific installation of 101 ceramics feet glazed black as a memorial to the partition of colonial India in 1947 along religious lines, which resulted in the creation of India and Pakistan. This watershed event sparked off the worst communal riots in the history of the sub-continent and two million Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs were killed, and a hundred thousand women were raped or abducted. Pritika’s artwork can also be seen online on her website www.pritikachowdhry.com.