Curators

Meenakshi Thirokode

2018

CURATOR

Meenakshi Thirukode is a writer, researcher and a 2016-17 FICA Inlaks Goldsmiths scholar at the M.Res program in Curatorial/ Knowledge, Goldsmiths, University of London. Her areas of focus and research is on the role of culture and collectivity in the subcontinent within the realm of a trans-nomadic, transient network of individuals and institutions. Her recent projects include organizing the “Here, There and Everywhere” conference at MAC Birmingham, UK as part of the India-UK 70 years celebration (March 2018) and “Out of Turn, Being Together Otherwise” in collaboration with Asia Art Archive (AAA) at Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa, India (December 15th-22nd 2018).

Her research, writings and curatorial work is invested in the role of reimagining cultural and political spaces in the region through alternate methods of pedagogy, lost, erased and invisible art histories as well as intersectionality. She has contributed to various publications including Marg Publications, Critical Collective, Depart Magazine, Hyperallergic, The Hindu Newspaper, Whitewall Magazine, Art Asia Pacific, Art India, Art and Deal Magazine, Art Journal, Artmap Magazine (China), Of Note Magazine and Grassroots Literature Blog. She also edited an upcoming online publication FIELD REVIEW: SOUTH ASIA (Oct 2016) produced in partnership with Asia Contemporary Art Consortium (ACAC), New York.

PROJECTS

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Ayush Kasliwal

2018

CURATOR

Ayush Kasliwal, the Creative Director of ANANTAYA and AKFD, graduated from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. Ayush is the winner of first Messe Frankfurt, India 2015, EDIDA India, Designer of the year 2013. He won the Best of Year Awards 2015: USA by Interior Design Magazine. Ayush was the finalist of CII Design Awards 2015, India’s Best Design Studio by Pool magazine 2015. The UNESCO Award of Excellence recognized his designs in 2007 and 2008. Edition Nouveau Objet (ENO), France, launched Ayush as a designer. Showcased in the Talents à la Carte section of ‘Maison ét Object’ in Paris and a finalist in the British Council’s Young Creative Entrepreneur Awards 2011, he has licensed products to MATER, a Danish ethical design house. He collaborated with Incubis’ sculptural installation at  Delhi International Airport Terminal T3. Ayush’s work is informed by traditional crafts and artisans and it reflects a deep understanding of mythology, architecture and culture through a contemporary aesthetic. He believes that “Objects are messages in physical form”.

Sumangala Damodaran

2018

CURATOR

Sumangala Damodaran is an economist and a musician. She been involved with teaching and research in Economics, Development Studies, and Popular Music Studies at Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD) for eight years now, after seventeen years teaching at Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Delhi University. She is the author of The Radical Impulse – Music in the Tradition of the Indian People’s Theatre Association based on her research, and has also collaborated with poets and musicians from South Africa for a project titled ‘Insurrections’. She is currently engaged in researching the relationship between music and migration, particularly of women in slavery.

Sabeena Gadihoke

2018

CURATOR

Sabeena Gadihoke is Professor at the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi where she teaches Digital Media Arts. She began her career as an independent documentary filmmaker and cameraperson. Gadihoke writes on Indian photo history, cinema and popular visual culture and has curated several photo shows. She was the curator of Light Works, a retrospective of photographer Jitendra Arya at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai and Bangalore during 2017-8. She has also written a book on India’s first woman press photographer Homai Vyarawalla titled Camera Chronicles of Homai Vyarawalla (2006). Gadihoke is a member of several advisory boards that includes the editorial board of the online journal ‘Trans Asia Photography Review’.

SIDDHANT SHAH

2018

CURATOR

Siddhant Shah is a Heritage Architect and Access Consultant who specialises in bridging the gap between Cultural Heritage and Disability, through his initiative #AccessforALL. Shah, a Stavros Niarchos Scholar has finished his MA in Heritage Management from the University of Kent (Athens Campus, Greece) and his bachelors in Architecture (BSSA-NMIMS, India) along with a Post graduate Diploma in Indian Aesthetics.

‘Access for ALL’ aims at pushing the boundaries of physical, intellectual and social access through innovative, indigenous design and advocacy while fostering an inclusive experiential culture. The team focuses on access audits, interpretation & educational activities, inclusive outreach programs, sensitization & awareness program, braille-tactile kits, braille books and CSR based engagement programs.

Photo_VidyaShivadas_SAF2025

2018

CURATOR

A curator and arts educator based in New Delhi, Vidya Shivadas is the Director of FICA and has curated widely at institutions including Vadehra Art Gallery, Devi Art Foundation, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, and Serendipity Arts Festival. Her practice is deeply rooted in critical art discourse, pedagogy and institutional frameworks. Shivadas has been visiting faculty at School of Cultures and Creative Expression, Ambedkar University Delhi since 2014. 

Kai

2018

CURATOR

Kai Tuchmann works mainly as a Director, Dramaturge and Academic. He studied Directing at the Drama Academy Ernst Busch, Berlin. Although strongly influenced by documentary theatre practices, he constantly tries to challenge the concept of documentation.

Currently, Kai works as a Dramaturge for Lian Guodong`s new choreography 关于未知的诗歌/ A Poem to the Unknown, which will highlight the crucial power of imagining future in troubled times. This piece will premiere in October 2020 in Beijing and will be shown in Germany and Italy as well. As a fellow of the recently founded Academy_for_Theatre_and_Digitality in Dortmund (Germany), Kai will collaborate in the second half of 2020 with the dancer Kiran Kumar and the programmer Matthias Härtig for the piece Dear Dead Doctor, which will premiere in 2021. Dear Dead Doctor will unfold on stage as a choreographic dialogue between the digital hologram P3B and Kiran Kumar. Materializing layers of presence and absence on stage, this work proposes aesthetic experiences of reincarnation through the use of recursive algorithms.

Between 2013 and 2018 Kai collaborated with some of China’s internationally most esteemed independent theatre groups, such as Living Dance Studio, Caochangdi Workstation and Grass Stage. The resulting collaborations have been invited to numerous festivals and venues, among others, to I Dance Hong Kong (2016), Zürcher Theaterspektakel (2017), Kunstfest Weimar (2017), Festival d’Automne à Paris (2017), and Asia Society New York (2018). Thematically, these works examine, among other things, the afterlife of the Cultural Revolution in present-day China, the effects of urban development on the population of the migrant workers, and the application of digital technologies.

Kai lectured, taught and conducted workshops, among others, at Beijing University, University of California Santa Cruz, Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi, and he is a Fulbright Scholar at The Graduate Center, City University New York, where in summer 2020 he will complete the work on his book “Situating Visibility -Dramaturgies of The Real in Dialogue”.

Kai published articles and chapter contributions on dramaturgy and documentary theatre in several books (for Routledge and the Brecht Yearbook) and he has written for Theatre Times and the German weekly Der Freitag.

Vivek

2018

CURATOR

Vivek Menezes is a widely published writer and photographer, and cofounder and co-curator of the acclaimed Goa Arts + Literature Festival.

Rashmi Varma

2018

CURATOR

Rashmi Varma is a designer, artist, and curator whose interdisciplinary practice spans fashion, film, theatre, interiors, and the visual arts, with garments and textiles at its core. Her work explores the intimacy of cloth, the sculptural form of drape, and the performative nature of wearing, weaving personal gestures into broader narratives of identity, history, and material culture. Deeply rooted in the handmade, Varma collaborates with artisans across India, engaging with generational knowledge and contemporary innovation. Her studio practice includes limited edition garments, private commissions, and design consulting.

Her curatorial projects include The Offbeat Sari at the Design Museum, London (Associate Curator, 2023) and Matters of Hand at Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa (Curator, 2018). She is the co-author of Sar: The Essence of Indian Design (Phaidon, 2016). Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), the Design Museum (London), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Toronto), and the Textile Museum of Canada (Toronto). 

Ranjana Dave, photo by Rohan Shivkumar

2018

CURATOR

Ranjana Dave is an artist, writer, editor, and occasionally, a curator. In her work, she explores how we build relationships with other people, ideas, objects and ecologies—and what makes us social beings. Recent projects include the book Body / Language (2024), which explores the relationship between language and the body in society, and 5-4-3-2-1 (The Elemental You, 2024), a participatory installation at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art. She edited the award-winning anthology Improvised Futures: Encountering the Body in Performance (Tulika Books/ West Heavens, 2021). Across independent and institutional roles in the arts, she works with text, movement, time, space and people. She also curated Dance projects at Serendipity Arts Festival in 2018.