November 15 , 2024
02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Birla Opus Auditorium (On Site) at ART MUMBAI 2024
As the discourse around South Asian arts and culture continues to evolve, the relevance of the geographical, historical and cultural boundaries of the region are being reconsidered.
During the course of the panel, speakers will take their cue from TAKE on Art Magazine's South Asia issue to discuss the roles art history, museums and biennales have played in complicating the understanding of South Asia; how art practices locate themselves in relation to South Asia; how the discourse on South Asian art responds to the larger paradigm of the Global South; and the limits and possibilities of using South Asia as a trope to regard art, culture and identity today.
Dr. Amin Jaffer directs The Al Thani Collection, an assembly of over 5,000 artworks curated by Sheikh Hamad bin Abdullah Al Thani. Formerly, Jaffer was Senior Curator at the V&A Museum and International Director of Asian Art at Christie’s. His publications include Furniture from British India and Ceylon, Luxury Goods, and Made for Maharajas. He co-curated significant V&A exhibitions such as Encounters: The Meeting of Asia and Europe, 1500–1800 and Maharaja: The Splendour of India’s Royal Courts and edited Beyond Extravagance. He also led exhibitions from the Al Thani Collection in Paris, Venice, Beijing, San Francisco, and Tokyo. In 2021, Jaffer opened The Al Thani Collection museum space at Hôtel de la Marine, Paris, collaborating with institutions like the V&A and Calouste Gulbenkian Museum. In 2023, he was named Artistic Director of the Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah for 2025.
Deepanjana Klein is the Director of Acquisitions and Development of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art. Klein has a Ph.D. in Indian Art History from De Montfort University in England and has taught art history, theory, and aesthetics at the Leicester School of Architecture in England and at the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environmental Studies in Mumbai. Her publications include contributions to the Encyclopaedia of Sculpture (Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers) and she regularly writes for various journals on the topic of contemporary Indian art. She is the recipient of several awards, including a grant from the Mellon Foundation (ArtStor) for her photographic documentation of the Ellora cave temples. Prior to working with the KMNA, she spent 15 years with Christie’s, as the International Head of Modern and Contemporary and Classical Indian and Southeast Asian Art. Deepanjana has led collaborations between Christie’s and major institutions, including The Met, overseen acquisitions for these institutions and has hosted numerous successful collaborative events and strengthened institutional relationships over the years.
Shanay Jhaveri is the Barbican’s Head of Visual Arts. Previously, he was Associate Curator of International Art from 2016 – 2022 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York where he was responsible for collection building, working on special projects, commission and delivering exhibitions. Among the shows Jhaveri has curated at the Met include the retrospective Phenomenal Nature: Mrinalini Mukherjee at the Met Breuer in 2019, Alex Da Cortes Met Roof Commission As Long as the Sun Lasts and Carol Boves Façade Commission The seances aren’t helping both in 2021. Shanay has published in various art journals, and has written books including Night Fever (Koenig, 2024) and America: Films from Elsewhere (The Shoestring Publisher, 2019) . In September 2023, Jhaveri launched a new series of site-specific commissions at the Barbican with Ranjani Shettar's Cloud songs on the horizon (Barbican Conservatory 2023) and Ibrahim Mahama’s Purple Hibiscus (Barbican Lakeside 2024). His most recent exhibition is The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975-1998 which opened at the Barbican Art Gallery in October 2024.
