The grant, formerly known as the SSAF Installation Art Grant and established in 2019, has been re-instituted as the Vivan Sundaram Grant for Installation Art in 2024. Named after Vivan Sundaram (1943–2023), artist-activist and co-founder of SSAF, the grant is premised on the fact that Indian art has been energized since the 1990s by what is broadly termed installation art, but that there has been limited infrastructural and institutional support for such projects.
