KNMA’s Research as Practice Lecture series showcases new episode ‘An Architect Contemplates Diasporic Longing,’- A lecture by Shahed Saleem

New Delhi, March 23, 2022: The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art presents the second segment of the online lecture series ‘Research as Practice’ titled Crafting Thought. This session will feature a talk by Shahed Saleem moderated by Annapurna Garimella. Shahed will discuss his research and fieldwork, and how it informs his design of buildings. In this conversation, he presents how he makes collaborative exhibitions, books and pedagogy as he thinks through the longings of a diaspora population and his own desire to practice community motivated architecture.

When: Thursday, 24 March, 2022

Time: 6:00 pm IST

Live on Zoom, Facebook and YouTube

Zoom Webinar ID: 831 8339 6163 

KNMA initiated the ‘Research as Pratice’ lecture series in February 2021, and has welcomed the likes of Hammad Nasar, Grant Watson, Nida Ghouse, Saira Ansari and Alexander Keefe. The series invites researchers, curators and artists to share and discuss their individual research practices, inventive forms and manifestations of research. It attempts to address the complexities of research-forms, be it as ‘research-exhibition’, creative research, curatorial, artistic or post-institutional research, or artworks as knowledge-systems. This program is conceptualised and organised by Akansha Rastogi, Senior Curator, KNMA.

Shahed Saleem is an architect and writer who teaches at the University of Westminster School of Architecture. His particular research and practice interests are in the architecture of migrant communities, and in particular their relationship to notions of heritage, belonging and nationhood. His book, The British Mosque, was published by historic England in 2018, and he co-curated the W&A Pavilion at the Venice Biennial 2021.

Annapurna Garimella is an art historian and designer who researches medieval Indic architecture and visual and built cultures in India after Independence. She heads Art, Resources and Teaching, a research library dedicated to projects and teaching in the visual, built and performing arts and Jackfruit Research and Design, which specialises in research and curation for the arts. Her recent books are the co-edited The Contemporary Hindu Temple (Marg, 2019) and the upcoming The Long Arc of South Asian Art in honour of art historian Vidya Dehejia (Women Unlimited, 2022). Digesting the Past: The Discourse of Sacralized Architectural Renovation in Southern India is her manuscript in preparation.

The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art

Established by art collector Kiran Nadar in 2010, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) is the first privately-funded museum of art exhibiting modern and contemporary works from India and the sub-continent. Located in New Delhi NCR, India’s capital city, KNMA hosts an ever-growing collection of artworks that both highlights a magnificent generation of 20th-century Indian painters from the post- Independence decades and engages with the different art practices of younger contemporaries.

Sponsored by the Shiv Nadar Foundation, KNMA is focused on bridging the gap between art and the public and fostering a museum-going culture in India. KNMA aims to become a place for confluence, dialogue and collaboration through its curatorial initiatives and exhibitions, school and college workshops, art appreciation discourses, symposiums, and public programs.