PUBLISHING SHIFTS: SOUTH ASIA

PUBLISHING SHIFTS: SOUTH ASIA

Contributors: Nayantara G. Kakshapati, Rahaab Allana, Sharmini Pereira, Yogesh Maitreya
Editors: Anshika Varma and Mala Yamey
Creative Director : Anshika Varma
Design Execution: Sanket Jadia
Communications & Research Assistant: Thuvaja Gopalakrishnan
Editorial Team: Anshika Varma, Mala Yamey and Nour Aslam

Publishing Shifts: South Asia examines the transformative energy of publishing across the region, spotlighting methodologies that bring urgent, often marginalized voices to the fore. This publication brings together the perspectives of leading practitioners — including Rahaab Allana, Sharmini Pereira, Nayantara G. Kakshapati, and Yogesh Maitreya — who explore how publishing has responded to social, political, and cultural currents. Their contributions reveal how books, zines, and other printed matter serve as tools of resistance, solidarity, and knowledge-making, while addressing critical questions of translation, distribution, and accessibility.

As part of the Art Murmur x Guftgu trilogy by Offset Projects and Art South Asia Projects, the book charts how publishing infrastructures — from offset presses to independent imprints — are reshaping narratives around caste, gender, and collective memory. It highlights the editors’ efforts to frame publishing as a dynamic space for challenging dominant discourses and imagining more equitable futures. Through essays, conversations, and archival reflections, Publishing Shifts: South Asia maps the creative and political agency of those working at the intersections of art, literature, and social practice, celebrating publishing as a vital act of authorship, cultural resistance, and community-building.

Art South Asia Project, in collaboration with the Guftgu program by Offset Projects, presents Art Murmur x Guftgu — a talk and publication series offering a critical, multilayered understanding of two decades of artist book-making and art publishing in South Asia. Across its three parts, the series traces the shifts in publishing ecosystems, the emergence of the artist book as a vital artistic practice, and the challenges of reaching global audiences with regionally rooted narratives.