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[VIRTUAL] Amar Kanwar + Shanay Jhaveri | Crisis and Creativity

[VIRTUAL] Amar Kanwar + Shanay Jhaveri | Crisis and Creativity

   21,
  9 - 10:30 a.m.
   Zoom Event (Off Campus)

Amar Kanwar
,
Shanay Jhaveri
,
Atreyee Gupta

The South Asia Art Initiative at UC Berkeley is delighted to launch Crisis and Creativity: Artists Speak Series, a new speaker series that addresses provocative and generative intersections between creative processes and societal, cultural, and environmental crises. The Series features conversations among artists, art professionals, curators, and scholars.

The fifth event in this series features a conversation between filmmaker and multi media artist, Amar Kanwar and Assistant Curator of International Modern and Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Shanay Jhaveri.
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DATE: Tuesday, September 21, 2021
TIME: 9am Berkeley | 5pm London | 9pm Lahore | 9:30pm New Delhi | Calculate Your Local Time

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This event will also be live streamed on the SAAI and Institute FB pages at SAAIatUCBerkeley and ISASatUCBerkeley respectively.
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Speaker Bios
Amar Kanwar is an artist, filmmaker and social activist committed to making art in reaction to social injustice. His key works have been A Season Outside, a reflective essay on violence; A Night of Prophecy on the poetry of resistance; the multiple projection installations The Lightning Testimonies about sexual violence in public conflicts; and The Torn First Pages on the Burmese democracy movement; The Sovereign Forest (2012 – ongoing) is a profound interrogation of the politics of violence and justice. Initiating a creative response to our understanding of crime, human rights, and ecology, it engages viewers in manifold ways of seeing and comprehending as it presents a set of propositions that investigates the notion of "poetry as evidence. He uses his films and multimedia installations to explore such issues as power politics, violence, ecology, sexuality and justice. His work often draws on stories from conflict areas. To increase the impact of his work, Kanwar makes sure his films reach a wide audience, from local film clubs and organizations that support conflict-ridden communities to exhibitions and film festivals across the world. His work demonstrates the importance of resistance, both individually and collectively, and the power of poetry and art to expose injustice.

Kanwar has received several awards for his work as a filmmaker and artist, including the Prince Claus Award, 2017; Golden Gate at the San Francisco Film Festival (1999); the Edvard Munch Award for Contemporary Art, Norway (2005); and Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change (2014). Recent solo exhibitions of Kanwar's work have been held at the Tate Modern, London (2018); Bildmuseet, Umea University, Sweden (2017 - 2018);[4] Goethe Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai (2016) and at the Assam State Museum in collaboration with Kiran Nadar Museum of Art and North East Network, India (2015). In 2013 and 2014 at the Art Institute of Chicago, USA; the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, U.K.; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA 21), Vienna, Austria and at the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2012). Retrospectives of his films have been held at film festivals including the 5th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala, Kerala State (2012); the 13th Madurai International Documentary and Short Film Festival (2011); the Documentary Dream Show, Tokyo (2010); the Parallel Perspectives Film Festival, Hyderabad (2008); and the 9th International Short Film Festival, Bangladesh (2005).

Shanay Jhaveri is Assistant Curator of International Modern and Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. A graduate of Brown University with a PhD from the Royal College of Art, his recent exhibitions include Companionable Silences (2013) at the Palais de Tokyo, Everything we do is music (2017) at the Drawing Room, and film programs for the Dhaka Art Summit, the Film at Lincoln Center, and Tate Modern. His books include Western Artists and India: Creative Inspirations in Art and Design, Outsider Films on India: 1950 & 1990, and America: Films from Elsewhere. He has published widely in various art journals. Jhaveri organized the 2018 Roof Commission, Huma Bhabha: We Come in Peace, and curated Phenomenal Nature: Mrinalini Mukherjee at The Met Breuer in 2019.
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Other events in this series include:

Oct 8, 2020: Allan deSouza + Gayatri Gopinath (New York University)
Nov 12, 2020: Alwar Balasubramaniam + Atreyee Gupta (University of California, Berkeley)
Mar 31, 2021: Naiza Khan + Asma Kazmi
April 7, 2021: Asma Kazmi + Santhi Kavuri-Bauer (San Francisco State University)
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The South Asia Art Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley promotes research-based conversations and collaborations around the arts of South Asia + its diasporas from the ancient period to the now. To read more about the Initiative and help support its various fundraising goals, please click HERE.
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Event made possible with the support of the Sarah Kailath Chair of India Studies

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The event is FREE and OPEN to the public.