This symposium proposes that exhibitions provide challenging and provocative sites through which to think about artistic exchanges and the two-way traffic between Britain and South Asia. It interrogates the lenses through which artistic production in South Asia have been framed in Britain, and argues that these frames have often been fashioned in colonial times, but continue to shape the reception of the art of South Asia in the contemporary moment. We seek to explore the legacies of such framings, but also take the exhibition to be a site of transaction and transformation, and potentially disturbance and challenge, to the colonialist narrative of and for the art of South Asia.
Panel one: Curatorial Panel
Deepak Ananth; Iwona Blazwick; David Elliott; Geeta Kapur; Sharmini Pereira - moderated by Hammad Nasar
Panel two: Crafting Practice
Devika Singh (chair), Susan Bean, Sria Chatterjee, Sabih Ahmed (response)
Panel three: Institutional Histories
Sonal Khullar (chair), Holly Shaffer, Lotte Hoek and Sanjukta Sunderason, Nima Poovaya-Smith (response)
Panel four: Discussion panel: Writing about exhibitions
Emilia Terracciano, Zehra Jumabhoy and Shezad Dawood – moderated by Lucy Steeds
Panel five: Competing modernities
Sonal Khullar (chair), Brinda Kumar, Hilary Floe, Daniel Rycroft (response)
Panel six: Exhibition circuits/ Networks of display between South Asian & Britain
Sarah Victoria Turner (chair), Naiza Khan and Karin Zitzewitz, Eva Bentcheva, Alnoor Mitha (response)
Discussion panel: Researching the Exhibition: Experience and event
Saloni Mathur, Carmen Julia and Sarah Turner - moderated by Claire Wintle
Panel seven: Other stories
David Dibosa (chair), Alice Correia, Shanay Jhaveri, Leon Wainwright (response)
Panel eight: Plenary panel
Discussion with Devika Singh, Hammad Nasar, Sonal Khullar, Sarah Turner and Nada Raza