I am a writer, curator, sometimes architect and art historian. I am currently Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) at the University of British Columbia. Previously, I was Curator, International Art at the Tate Modern.
At the Tate, I curated Rasheed Araeen’s Zero to Infinity (2023) and oversaw the acquisition of works from South Asia and its diaspora. I worked across exhibitions, displays and acquisitions, to think critically about museum collections and expand the representation of marginalized artists from South Asia, the Indian Ocean and its diaspora. I shepherded in acquisitions including the first video game in the collection, the first photographic work that bridges Indian Punjab and the midlands, and the first artist from the Shomoy Group. Prior to that, I was Instructor for Curatorial Studies at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program (ISP). I am myself an alumnus of the ISP, where I was supervised by the late Okwui Enwezor and Sarah Lookofksy. I earned my PhD from Cornell University in the Department of the History of Art and Visual Studies and an MArch from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
I have contributed interviews, essays and criticism to numerous artists’ catalogues, publications, peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes, including ArtForum, Frieze, Bidoun, and The Funambulist. I am a recipient of The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant and a Fulbright award. I have taught at Johns Hopkins University, Cornell University, the Cooper Union, The New School, and National College of the Arts (NCA). I have presented my research internationally at international venues including King’s College, Cambridge University, The Cooper Union, New York University, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Rhode Island School of Design, VCU Qatar, and the Sharjah March Meeting.
My scholarship focuses on transregional histories of modernism and contemporary art across South and West Asia and the United States and Europe. My research interests include histories of art, architecture and decolonization, art and activism, race and racialization, migration and diaspora, gender and sexuality, and black and postcolonial thought.
My current book project is about the artists Zarina, Nasreen Mohamedi, Lala Rukh and Rummana Hussain. It is a history of decolonial, feminist artists that bridges the Indian subcontinent, the Indian Ocean, Europe and the United States during the second half of the twentieth century.
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