Rudritara Shroff has curated a new edition of Art For Baby, a picture book for newborns featuring work by fifteen contemporary Indian artists using only white, black, and shades of gray - the only colours newborns can see in the first three months of their life. Outset UK and UNICEF India are collaborators on this project, and all proceeds from the sale of the book are donated to children’s welfare projects in India.
Inspiration for the book came from a similar project by Outset UK, who published and auctioned the first edition of Art For Baby in 2008, with donations from Tracey Emin, Anthony Gormley, Damien Hirst, Grayson Perry, and Keith Tyson.
For the 2024 edition, Shroff partnered with Outset UK and reached out to fifteen contemporary Indian artists who contributed their artworks. The featured artists are Dhruvi Acharya, Jyoti Bhatt, Jyotsna Bhatt, Jogen Chowdhury, Atul Dodiya, Anju Dodiya, Shilpa Gupta, N.S. Harsha, Bijoy Jain, Reena Saini Kallat, Shakuntala Kulkarni, Manish Nai, Amol K. Patil, Gigi Scaria, and Sudarshan Shetty.
Rudritara Shroff said:
'My aim is to offer a new generation of children the same visual awakening that so enriched my own childhood, using the striking contrasts and intricate designs of contemporary Indian art to stimulate early cognitive development.'
'All the works were shown to a leading Indian pediatric ophthalmologist, Dr Ashwin Kumar Sainani, from Hinduja Hospital, Mumbai. The Outset Team sought the opinion of Dr Vicky Armstrong, Infant Art Psychotherapist and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Psychology at the University of Dundee and her colleague, Dr Josephine Ross, Senior Lecturer in Developmental Psychology and Experimental Psychologist at the University of Dundee, for their approval to ensure that they were suitable for Art For Baby. The University of Dundee runs several projects for children’s wellbeing through participation in art across Scotland, especially as an intervention for vulnerable families and to help build strong attachment relationships. I also shared my project with Dr Vikram Patel, Paul Farmer Professor and Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, to get his approval.'
The artworks were on display at Christie’s in Mumbai, Delhi, London and New York, following which they were auctioned online as part of the South Asia Modern and Contemporary Sale in March.
The book is available to buy from July 2024 onwards.
