India

Virtual Discussion @ the Smithsonian

Date: Wednesday, November 18, 2020, 6 – 7 pm
Join the Curator:  A Conversation with Annu Palakunnathu Matthew (virtual)

This fall, as we commemorate the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, artist and scholar Annu Palakunnathu Matthew sheds light on a lesser-known aspect of that conflict through her recent work based on archival photographs of Indian soldiers. Join the artist, along with curators Asma Naeem and Carol Huh, for a discussion on the incompleteness of our historical narratives and the political dimensions of historical forgetfulness. T

Annu Palakunnathu Matthew is a multimedia artist, photographer, and professor of art at the University of Rhode Island. She has also served as director of the Center for the Humanities and as Silvia-Chandley Professor of Nonviolence and Peace Studies. She is represented by the gallery sepiaEYE in New York City. 

Asma Naeem is the Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown Chief Curator at the Baltimore Museum of Art and is a specialist in American art and contemporary Islamic art. She was previously associate curator at Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and received her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, College Park. 

Carol Huh is curator of contemporary art at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art. Huh focuses on current artistic production related to Asia through exhibitions, acquisitions, and public programs.

Images from top clockwise: Artist experimenting with crystals courtesy David H Wells.
Lt E C Joshua and Flt Lt Arjan Jethanand Mirchandani.

Reclaimed Baggage @ Northern Illinois University Art Museum

Public Reception: 5-6:30 p.m., Thursday, March 29, NIU Art Museum

curated by Nirmal Raja

Memories @ SFO Museum at the San Francisco International Airport

Memories of India @ SFO Museum at the San Francisco International Airport

2017 LightField Festival of Multimedia Visual Art

LightField’s 2nd Festival of multimedia art presents the work of six distinguished artists. In different ways, their visual projects look past common perceptions and stereotypes to delve into the real lives of people largely invisible to mainstream culture. These artists are unflinching in their engagement with working-class people of all ethnicities, who day-to-day face challenges to their humanity and dignity from within and without their communities.

By presenting their work in one venue (Hudson Hall), with innovative, multifaceted displays, Just the Facts asserts the potency of the art’s subject matter, and also aims to explore how the realism on the artworks’ surface creates lively, nuanced entry points to broader conversations.
Those entry points include:
– the agency of the disenfranchised individual in American society;
– the prospect of social, economic, and political upheavals now dominating secular life;
– the myth of documentary objectivity;
– the ways in which globalization and technology have left many individuals and families behind;
– and the ways in which immigrants have become the focus of insecurity and fear worldwide.

Lucid Dreams, Distant Visions @ Asia Society, NYC