2012 Speakers

Abhay Maskara is a curator, thinker and independent writer on art. He published his first book “Collecting Art – An Insider’s View of the Indian Art World” in 2012. His curatorial practice has been acclaimed as most innovative and conceptually challenging in Mumbai city by The Economic Times, a leading business newspaper in India. He was also selected by CNNGo.com as the top 20 people to watch in Mumbai. In 2011 Abhay Maskara was invited to curate a show at the Agnes B. Foundation in Paris. He has been the Curatorial Director of Gallery Maskara, Mumbai, India since 2008.

Dr. Annapurna Garimella is a designer and an art historian who focuses on the art and architecture of India and is based in Bangalore, India. She heads Jackfruit, a research and design organization, with a specialized portfolio of design and curatorial projects for artists, museums, government and private organizations and non-profits. She is also founder of Art, Resources and Teaching Trust, a not-for profit organization that gathers resources and promotes research and teaching in art and architectural history, archaeology, crafts, design, and other related disciplines in academic and non-academic fora. She was the former Research Editor and Advisory Board Member for Marg Publications and has written several essays on contemporary art.

Aveek Sen is a senior assistant editor at The Telegraph, Kolkata where he has written extensively on art, photography, literature & culture. He was a Rhodes scholar at University College, Oxford. He is the recipient of the 2009 Infinity Award for Writing on Photography, awarded by the International Center of Photography, New York

Diana Campbell is founding director and chief curator, Creative India Foundation, Hyderabad. She is responsible for directing the foundation‟s programming, selecting artists & commissioning sculptures for India‟s first international sculpture park. She has curated Indian non-profit sculpture projects for international art fairs and exhibitions such as the India Art Fair, SH Contemporary, the Shanghai Biennale, Bold Tendencies, Frieze NY and Frieze London amongst others. She is a key advisor for renowned international sculpture parks on Indian artists for their collections such as De Cordova Sculpture Park, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wanas etc.

Dr. Inke Arns, is curator and artistic director of Hartware MedienKunstVerein in Dortmund since 2005. She has worked internationally as an independent curator, writer and theorist specializing in media art, net cultures, and Eastern Europe since 1993. She lived in Paris (1982–86), studied Slavic Studies, Eastern European studies, political science, and art history in Berlin and Amsterdam(1988–96) and in 2004 obtained her PhD from the Humboldt University in Berlin. She has been teaching at universities and art academies in Berlin (Humboldt University),Leipzig (Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, HGB), Zurich (Hochschule derKünste, ZHdK), and Rotterdam (Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy), and has lectured and published internationally.

Meera Menzes is an independent curator and writer living in New Delhi. She has an M.A. from the Centre of German Studies, JNU. Her most recent curatorial projects include Slipping through the cracks, and Living off the Grid amongst others. She has lectured at the Karl Jaspers Centre in Heidelberg on the first Indian pavilion at Biennale di Venezia (2011). Meera is the New Delhi correspondent of Art India and has written extensively on modern and contemporary Indian art and has in the past, produced several features and documentaries with First German Television (ARD). She was awarded a residency grant by Pro-Helvetia The Swiss Arts Council to studynew media curation in Switzerland in 2011 and a Chevening scholarship for Young Broadcast Journalists.

Patrick Gosatti is a freelance curator based in Geneva and has extensive experience in curating and writing in contemporary art. He curated the Festival Les Urbaines, Lausanne and was a coordinator for IILA Pavilion at the 53rd Biennale di Venezia involving large-scale installation works. He has contributed to several periodical publications including, KunstBulletin magazine, Zurich & Art Collector magazine, Basel amongst others.

Suman Gopinath is an independent curator and founder/director of CoLab Art & Architecture, Bangalore, India. She set- up CoLab in 2005; CoLab works with artists, architects, curators and academics and presents contemporary Indian work within the context of international practice. She studied Fine Arts Administration and Curating at Goldsmiths‟ College, University of London, UK. Some of her recent projects where she cocurated include: Jogja Biennale XI – Shadow Lines: Indonesia meets India, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2011-2012); Practices in Contemporary Art & Architecture, Bangalore, India (2010 – 2011); Nasreen Mohamedi: Notes / Reflections on Indian Modernism (2009 – 2011) Santhal Family: Positions Around an Indian Sculpture, Muhka, Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp, Belgium (2008); Horn Please: Narratives from Contemporary Indian Art, Bern, Switzerland (2007, 2008). She was invited curator of the Lyon Biennale, 2007 – History of a Decade that has Not Yet Been Named and networking curator for Singapore Biennale 2006 - Belief. Suman has written texts for exhibition catalogues and contributed to art journals like Afterall, Art Review and Flash Art.

Sumesh Sharma & Zasha Colah are founding directors and curators at The Clark House Initiative, Bombay, a not-for-profit space that opened in 2010. Recent projects include Arranging Chairs for Ai Weiwei, an exhibition at Clark House, along with Ai Weiwei and a group of Indian artists, Experiments with the Magyars – New Delhi at the Hungarian Information and Cultural Centre and Music.

Sumesh Sharma graduated from the Universite Paul Cezanne, Aix-en-Provence. He was part of the second edition of the Gwangju Biennale International Curators Programme, 2010 in South Korea. He is actively involved in art projects that address the concern of urban gentrification and was the founder-director of the Crawford Market Public Art Project, a UNHabitat funded initiative to address the concern over the redevelopment of the municipal wholesale market in Mumbai.

Zasha Colah did a M.A. in Curating Contempoary Art, Royal College of Art, London preceded by a Master of Studies in History of Art and Visual Culture, Oxford University, UK, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Indian Aesthetics, Prince of Wales Museum & Bombay University, India. In addition to being a curator at The Clark House Initiative, Zasha is a Lecturer in Art Theory at Rachna Sansad Academy of Fine Arts, Mumbai. She was previously curator of Modern Art at Prince of Wales Museum (Bombay) and an exhibitions assistant at Serpentine Gallery, London.

Susan Hapgood is the curator & founding director of the non-profit space, Mumbai Art Room founded in 2010. Previously she was senior advisor at the Independent Curators International (ICI), NY, The Curator of Exhibitions at the American Federation of Arts, NY, Curatorial coordinator at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY & the New Museum of Contemporary Art, NY. Susan has a M.A. in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU and a B.A. from University of Rochester, NY. She recently authored a „white paper‟ for Asia Society on transnational collaboration between US & India.