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