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Tate Modern Conference

Fugitive Forms Performance in South Asia

22 October 2022 at 10.30–17.30
Looking from above down at a woman sat on the floor with piles of wet sand around her in different shapes.

Yasmin Jahan Nupur, Lucid Sleep curated by HH Art Spaces, Serendipity Arts Festival, 2016, image credit: Dheer Kaku.

Explore the history of performance art across South Asia

This seminar explores the history of performance art and its relationship to forms of protests across South Asia. Instead of thinking of the region as a whole, the contributors present the unique political conditions and social forms under which performance practices emerged in each place and context.

Through modes and methods, frameworks and strategies, as well as the experiences and ambitions of artists and artist-run initiatives, the seminar seeks to recognise and learn from the uneven, adverse, and non-linear histories that shape the forms of performance we encounter in the region today.

Speakers include: Nikhil Chopra, Godwin Constantine, Mario D’Souza, Madhavi Gore, Sandev Handy, Salima Hashmi, Romain Loustau, Yasmin Jahan Nupur, Jagath Weerasinghe.

Convened by: Nikhil Chopra (HH Art Spaces), Mario D’Souza (Director of Programmes, Kochi Biennale Foundation), Sook-Kyung Lee (Senior Curator, International Art, Tate), Devika Singh (Senior Lecturer, Courtauld Institute of Art)

This event is part of Antibodies, a programme in partnership with The Tetley.

Organised by Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational and HH Art Spaces (supported by British Council’s India/UK Together Season of Culture)

10.30–11.00: Introduction

  • Sook Kyung-Lee, Senior Curator, International Art, Tate, and Nikhil Chopra, artist and co-founder HH Art Spaces

11.00–12.45: Panel 1

  • A Long History of Performance and Protest in South Asia
    • Mario D’Souza, Director of Programmes, Kochi Biennale Foundation
  • We Sinful Women
    • Salima Hashmi, artist, art educator, curator and contemporary art historian
  • Protesting Bodies and Performing Residues: The Afterlives of Contemporary Performance Art in Sri Lanka
    • Sandev Handy, Curator, co-authored with Sharmini Pereira, Chief Curator, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Sri Lanka
  • Panel Discussion and Q&A
    • Moderated by Huma Mulji, artist and Lecturer, Plymouth College of Art and University of the West of England

12.45–14.00: Lunch

14.00–16.10: Panel 2

  • Against Despair: Performance Art and the “90s Trend” in Sri Lankan Modernist Art
    • Jagath Weerasinghe, artist and founding Chair of Theertha International Artists Collective
  • Performance Art and Protest in Sri Lanka
    • Godwin Constantine, artist and Chairman of the Theertha International Artist Collective
  • To Swim Against Water: New/Alternate structures for gathering bodies
    • Madhavi Gore, Nikhil Chopra, Romain Loustau, artists and co-founders of HH Art Spaces, and Shivani Gupta artist and partner at HH Art Spaces
  • Yasmin Jahan Nupur, artist and member of Britto Arts Trust
  • Panel Discussion and Q&A
    • Moderated by Alessio Antoniolli, Director, Gasworks

16.10–16.30: Break

16.30–17.30: Final presentation

  • Amol K Patil, artist

17.30: Closing

Download the full programme PDF

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Tate Modern

Starr Cinema

Bankside
London SE1 9TG
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Date & Time

22 October 2022 at 10.30–17.30

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Free with ticket

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