Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Search in posts
Search in pages
Loading Events

Natasha Ginwala

Moral levitation: imploding the canon
11 August 2018 / 5.15 pm CEST

exhibition view, documenta 14, Kassel, 2016/17
Nilima Sheikh, Terrain: Carrying Across, Leaving Behind, 2016/17, casein tempera on sixteen rolls of canvas, wood and metal; exhibition view, documenta 14, Kassel
Photo: Mathias Völzke


This talk will draw upon questions of reciprocity, artistic production of transnational networks and the subverting of canonized art history as vital aspects in contemporary curating. Moving beyond the North-South binary, I wish to draw upon recent projects at documenta 14 (2017, Athens and Kassel) and at Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin) that produce new citations and pursue fissured histories of the Indian subcontinent, while drawing upon collective practices and pedagogic models, such as Santiniketan. Furthermore, how may we respond to South Asian contemporary practice while engaging a lexicon that is affective rather than formal, oscillating between affinity and estrangement?

Natasha Ginwala is a curator and writer. She curated Contour Biennale 8, Polyphonic Worlds: Justice as Medium and was curatorial advisor for documenta 14, 2017. Other recent projects include Arrival, Incision. Indian Modernism as Peripatetic Itinerary in the framework of Hello World. Revising a Collection at Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, 2018, Riots: Slow Cancellation of the Future at ifa Gallery Berlin and Stuttgart (DE), 2018, My East is Your West at the 56th Venice Biennale, 2015, and Corruption: Everybody Knows… with e-flux, New York, NY (US) 2015. Ginwala was a member of the artistic team for the 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, 2014, and has cocurated The Museum of Rhythm, at Taipei Biennial 2012 and at Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź (PL), 2016/17. Ginwala writes on contemporary art and visual culture and has contributed to numerous publications. She was recently appointed curator at Gropius Bau, Berlin.