Alice Boner Institute Residency

Residency brief

The Alice Boner Institute (ABI) stands as a repository for the artistic traditions of India through published books, manuscripts, and a rich art collection. It is a space that nurtures academic and artistic research through its art library, artist, writer and researcher residencies, and exchange programmes, short courses, and publications.

Alice Boner Institute Residency targets individuals whose research deals with the culture of India, or for whom the cultural context of Varanasi is integral. They can be writers, practitioners, or social science researchers. During the course of their stay, residents are expected to engage with other institutional networks as well as hold presentations, readings, and workshops for a public audience.

  • Thematic focus Literature / Humanities
  • LocationVaranasi, (Uttar Pradesh)
  • Dates 1 November - 15 December 2023
  • Length of stay 6 weeks
  • Applications are closed

Our Space

Assi Ghat, Varanasi, (Uttar Pradesh)

The Alice Boner Institute residency programme is located at Assi Ghat on the banks of the river Ganga, in Varanasi. It is located in an old house with heritage architecture that was once the home of the Swiss artist and scholar Alice Boner from 1935 to 1978.

Our Laureates

Clément Xavier Comic Book Writer

Scriptwriting is a fairly solitary exercise. Therefore, I love to write documentary comics, because they are a way of discovering, and meeting other people and other cultures. I'm starting to write a comic project on the Ganges, which will allow me to tackle both cultural and ecological issues.

Clément Xavier was born in Maputo in 1981. After studying at the Angoulême School of Comics, he founded the publishing house Na éditions. He creates comics and Graphic novels: Yékini le roi des arènes, published by Flblb (Winner of the Prix révélation at Angoulême festival in 2015), followed by Geronimo, Mémoires d'un résistant apache et Jujit suffragettes, les amazones de Londres, about suffragettes who train in Jujutsu to defend themselves (winner of the Prix Château de Cheverny for historical comic in 2021) published by Delcourt. Also with the same publisher, he has adapted Gérard Noiriel's Histoire populaire de la France into a comic book. He is also working with the publisher Glénat, writing the undercover investigation by Elizabeth Freeman into the horrific lynching of Jesse Washington (Waco horror, 2020), and with the publisher Actes Sud l'an 2 on a comic about Frances Gabe, a woman who turned her house into a giant dishwasher to escape the household chores so unevenly divided between the sexes (Washing Town, 2022).