start: Nov 03, 2014 04:30PM
End: Nov 03, 2014 06:30PM
Venue: Asian College of Journalism, 2nd Main Rd, Tharamani, Tharamani, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600113, India
Description:
In a joint collaboration, The US Consulate General Chennai, DakshinaChitra Museum and the Asian College of Journalism, will host a panel discussion titled FLATLAND: THIS WORLD/OTHER WORLDS on November 3rd at the Asian College of Journalism’s lecture hall, from 5:00 – 6:30 PM.
Panelists include Masum Momaya, Curator at Smithsonian’s Asian Pacific American Center, Sadanand Menon, Arts Editor and Adjunct Faculty at Asian College of Journalism and IIT(M) and Jaret Vadera, Artist and Cultural Producer. The discussion will be moderated by Meenakshi Thirukode, Creative Director, DakshinaChitra Museum.
FLATLAND: THIS WORLD/OTHER WORLDS will focus on the various challenges and potential opportunities when art and ideas shift across cultural-contexts. The discussion will focus predominantly on artists living in India or the diaspora and on the ways in which curation, academia, and audience shape the ways in which their artwork is presented, and received. We will discuss reductive binaries of identity including West / East; Nation / Diaspora.
The panel takes its title from Edwin A. Abbott’s Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. The novel is a “first-person” account of a two-dimensional square who comes to appreciate a three-dimensional world. The story centers on the idea of vision and reveals the biases with which we ‘see’, and thereby create our understanding of the world and each other.
Panelist Bios:
Masum Momaya is a museum curator at the Asian Pacific American Center and an expert on women’s and human rights, race and social justice. Momaya developed all content for “Beyond Bollywood: Indian Americans Shape the Nation,” the largest exhibition designed by the center to date. Before coming to the Smithsonian, Momaya did curatorial work for the Association for Women’s Rights in Development, the International Museum of Women and the Indo-American Heritage Museum. Her portfolio includes two online multimedia, multilingual exhibitions; a community-based exhibition at a local museum; a solo artist exhibition; and a commissioned multiple artist, themed exhibition.
Sadanand Menon is a nationally reputed arts editor, popular teacher of cultural journalism, photographer, stage lights designer and prolific speaker at seminars on politics, ecology and the arts. He is currently Adjunct Faculty, Asian College of Journalism, Chennai, and at IIT, Madras. Sadanand is member, Apex Advisory Committee, National Museum, Delhi; Advisory Committee, National Gallery of Modern Art, Bengaluru; Advisory Council, Lalit Kala Akademi, Delhi; Governing Council, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla; and Managing Trustee, SPACES, an arts foundation, Chennai. A close associate of legendary choreographer Chandralekha, he is deeply involved with issues concerning contemporary Indian dance. He also curated a major Retrospective Exhibition of Fifty Years of Dashrath Patel’s work in painting, ceramics, photography and design for NGMA, Delhi and Mumbai
Jaret Vadera is an artist and cultural producer working between New York, Toronto, and India. Through his interdisciplinary practice, Vadera explores the poetics of translation, and the politics of vision. In parallel to his exhibition career, he has worked as an organizer, programmer, curator, researcher, writer, editor, educator, and designer on projects that focus on using art as a catalyst for social change / justice. He has organized a number of exhibitions, events, and collaborative experiments including 1-1=1: Experimental Video / Art at the Alwan Film Festival; Shifting Shapes – Unstable Signs at Yale University; and Ghosts and Machines as Rush Arts Gallery. Vadera completed his undergraduate education at Ontario College of Art and Design, and Cooper Union receiving his Master of Fine Arts from the Yale School of Art.
Facebook event URL is https://www.facebook.com/events/330539950459866
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