New Delhi: The Raza–Students’ Biennale Scholarship is an academic and artistic mobility programme for emerging Indian artists selected from the Students’ Biennale, an educational initiative of the Kochi Biennale Foundation (KBF). The programme is supported by the French Institute in India (IFI), the Raza Foundation and the Kochi Biennale Foundation.

Through the scholarship, selected artists spend a semester at Beaux-Arts de Marseille, where they can develop their practices in a French art school and engage with a new cultural and artistic environment.

IFI and the Raza Foundation jointly support the students’ travel, accommodation and living expenses. IFI also covers two months of online French-language classes before departure.

For the 2026 edition, Rutuja Sonawane and Mohammad Riyaz have been selected from among the 183 participants in the 2025–26 Students’ Biennale. Their semester in Marseille will run from 21 September 2026 to 29 January 2027.

Following a two-month selection process, the recipients were chosen by a jury comprising Shaleen Wadhwana, an independent arts educator, researcher and curator; Umah Jacob, Director of External Relations & Outreach at India Art Fair; Rajyashri Goody, an artist based in Goa whose practice examines caste, Dalit resistance and food and water politics; and Osheen Siva, a multidisciplinary artist from Thiruvannamalai based in Goa.

This is the result of a two-phase exchange programme; two students from Les Beaux Arts de Marseille, Kaki Weiss and Nina Durel, participated in a two-week residency in Kochi, from 1 to 15 December 2025. During this period, they created an original work as part of the Biennale, for which they both received a grant from KBF. Their work then has been exhibited at the 6th edition of the Student Biennale that was held from 12 December 2025 to 31 march 2026.

This two-phase exchange programme aimed at encouraging mobility and exchanges between France and India

The laureates

Rutuja Sonawane

Sir J. J. School of Art, Mumbai, Maharashtra

Presented at the 2025–26 Students’ Biennale, at VKL Warehouse in Mattancherry, Kochi, Rutuja’s installation People’s Orchestra traces the evolution of Swar Samrat, a brass band established nearly 50 years ago by her father, Bhagwan Sonawane in Satana, Maharashtra. Rooted in Ambedkarite thought, the band’s original compositions address education, equality and empowerment. Through the installation, she examines this musical and political legacy and the perseverance that sustained the ensemble’s development from a handcart to a large public procession.


More broadly, Rutuja’s practice explores how sound, memory and lived experience can be translated into visual forms. Through painting, portraiture, installation and found objects, she works with old musical instruments, leather, textiles and other materials connected to the band. These objects carry memories of her family, the band members and the larger community. She is interested in how these materials can become an archive of a history that is often not represented in mainstream narratives. Her work therefore looks at the relationship between music, caste, memory, identity and the ways communities preserve their histories.

Rutuja shares what the exchange opportunity means to her: “It is an opportunity to step outside the environment in which my practice has developed and encounter different ways of thinking about art, research and artistic education. At this stage of my practice, I would like to explore how sound, music, archives and collective memory can be translated into contemporary visual and spatial forms. I am especially interested in learning through interaction with artists, students and teachers, and understanding how different perspectives can influence my way of working. I would like to experiment with new materials and forms of installation, while also developing my research around my father’s journey and the wider history of the community connected to the band.”

Mohammad Riyaz

MFA Painting, Government Institute of Fine Arts, Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh

Riyaz’s contribution to the collaborative project Inheritance of the Hand, which was on view at Arthshila Kochi, created with artist Aman Kumar Bavariya, brings traditional craft techniques into dialogue with contemporary painting. Both artists work with manjarpat, a raw muslin associated with India’s colonial history and with histories of resistance, labour and economic control.

In his individual practice, Riyaz uses tailoring and textile construction, stitching painted muslin to examine the precarious lives of farmers in India. His layered surfaces and reconfigured garments reflect on land struggles, dignity and the burdens carried by rural communities.



 

“Growing up on my family's farm, witnessing the lives, struggles and everyday experiences of Indian middle-class farmers has profoundly shaped my artistic practice. Through my work, I want to further explore textiles, painting, mixed media and installation art. Textiles hold a special place in my work, as I learn to sew alongside my mother as a child. In Les Beaux-Arts de Marseille, I am particularly interested in pursuing in-depth research into textile-based practices combining with installation to better express my personal memories and experiences. In addition, I would like to further develop the presentation of my artworks, finding new ways to communicate my ideas, research and artistic process in a more engaging and meaningful way, while creating a stronger dialogue with audiences”, also expresses Mohammad Riyaz about his expectations on this unique opportunity.

Grégor Trumel, Director of the French Institute in India highlights: “This scholarship builds on our enduring collaboration with the Kochi Biennale Foundation in order to foster sustainable mobilities, at every stage of the artist’s career, the same way we have welcomed artists in residency over the past two Biennale’s editions (cf. Villa Swagatam). By enabling today young graduates Rutuja Sonawane and Mohammad Riyaz to further their training in France - following in the footsteps of the eminent artist S.H. Raza - we continue to nurture meaningful and rooted artistic dialogue between our two countries, in order to build a new generation of cultural Passeurs.”

The scholarship builds on the history of artistic exchange between India and France and on the legacy of S.H. Raza. In 1950, Raza travelled to France on a French Government scholarship to study at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. France remained central to his artistic journey; he later established a studio in Gorbio, where he lived and worked for nearly 20 years.

By creating concrete opportunities for artistic mobility and education this scholarship aims at supporting a new generation of Indian artists to engage with in France. During their semester in Marseille, the laureates will expand their professional networks and encounter new approaches to artistic practice and research.

Ashok Vajpeyi, Managing and Life Trustee of the Raza Foundation expresses “The Raza Foundation is happy to join the French Institute in India and Kochi Biennale Foundation to support the Raza Students’ Biennale Scholarship enabling the visit and stay of two bright Indian students for a semester in Beaux-Arts de Marseille. Raza went in Paris to study art in 1950 and remained there for sixty years. He landed in France by boat at Marseille and built a summer house-cum-studio in Gorbio, a village close to Menton.”

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