Kambli Caps Busy Year with Howard Fellowship

 
Priya Kambli, professor of art, has been awarded a 2025 Howard Fellowship in the field of Object Art and Installation.
 
The George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation is an independent foundation administered at Brown University. The Howard Foundation awards a limited number of fellowships each year for independent projects in selected fields, targeting its support specifically to early mid-career individuals who have completed at least one major project and demonstrate potential to be future leaders in their fields. This highly competitive fellowship comes in the amount of $40,000.
 
For the Howard Foundation fellowship, Kambli proposed to create and document ephemeral installations in the American landscape using her mother’s object of worship in a new body of work titled, “The idea of home follows me wherever I go.” This work connects her matriarchal archive with the American landscape, drawing new lines of belonging and visually considering the question how she, as an immigrant, belongs to her adopted land.
 
“My photographic approach is grounded in interventions with my family inheritance – a personal archive of photographs and heirlooms – and has required time, effort and constant making and remaking,” Kambli said. “I am glad to see that artistic effort being recognized on a platform such as Howard Foundation can provide. And the financial support provided by this grant is essential, as it allows for me to actualize my desires for the work, such as publication, exhibition and other forms of dissemination.”
 
The Howard Fellowship is the most recent recognition Kambli has earned in a very productive year. She is the winner of the 2025 Leica Women Foto Project Award, which serves to empower the female perspective and its impact on today’s visual stories. The selected winners from each of the regions also receive a Leica SL3 camera, a Vario-Elmarit-SL 24-70mm f/2.8 ASPH lens and a $10,000 cash prize.
 
Later this year, Kambli will be an artist-in-residence at MacDowell in Peterborough, New Hampshire. MacDowell’s mission is to nurture the arts by offering talented individuals an inspiring residential environment in which to produce enduring works of the creative imagination. Kambli is one of 201 artists-in-residence selected this year from a pool of more than 2,200 applicants.  
 
“At MacDowell, three chief-made meals are delivered to your doorstop in beautiful baskets. I can’t wait to experience this phenomenon and eating these delicious meals,” she said. “Also, I’m looking forward to being part off and engaging with an amazing artist community that MacDowell provides.”
 
Kambli is also in exclusive company as one of six people selected to be an artist fellow at the Kala Art Institute in Berkely, California. With a mission to help artists sustain their creative work, the Kala Art Institute Fellowship program has a long history of inviting and supporting artists experimenting across media, disciplines and new media genres. Kambli will be onsite at Berkely at a time to be determined.
 
This year also saw Kambli’s work on display as a solo exhibition for Nilaya Anthology in Mumbai, India. The space’s programming includes art, design showcases and interactive sessions that aim to provide visitors with design inspiration. Perhaps most importantly, it gave Kambli’s family in India a chance to finally see her work in person.
 
“I think my family was a bit overwhelmed,” she said. “The opening was rather grand. My family wasn’t expecting that, and neither was I. There were celebrities in attendance – movie stars, cricketers, etc. My sister got to say hello to Shabana Azmi – an Indian actress of film, television and theatre who attended the opening – so overall it was an experience, they would haven’t necessarily ever had, and of course they got to see my art in person.”
 
This fall, Kambli will be teaching two photography courses at Truman, as well as a Self and Society class for art majors.