Mediating the Gaze in a Lens-based Culture

Zoya Siddiqui is a visual artist based between Lahore and Vancouver, working primarily in video, performance and installation. Zoya’s practice has most recently been exploring the longing and imaginaries for a utopic world, within Muslim, Pakistani or South Asian communities that she either identifies with or works with in close proximity. Working through research material, conversations and varying cultural media, she has an interest in the way these imaginaries are shared in.

Siddiqui completed her MFA at UPenn with the Lawrence Shprintz Award and the Fulbright scholarship. She is represented by Shrine Empire Gallery in New Delhi and has been part of international residencies at the Vasl Artists’ Collective Karachi, Theertha Performance Platform in Colombo, In-Situ UK, Delfina Residency UK, and Triangle Arts Association New York.

Anushka Rajendran is a curator and writer based in New Delhi. She is the curator for Prameya Art Foundation (PRAF), a not-for-profit arts organisation based in New Delhi committed to approaches that enable audience-thinking for contemporary art in India. She is also Festival Curator of the 2021 edition of the interdisciplinary arts festival in Sri Lanka, Colomboscope, Curator of Video Art for the 2021 Asian Art Biennial, organised by National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, and was assistant curator for Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2018. Her ongoing research traces how the notion of ‘public’ has acquired alternative significance to contemporary Indian art since 2004. Her previous MPhil research at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, focused on the emergence of installation art in India in the early 1990s to address collective and personal trauma, which has since expanded to encompass the South Asian region. For her curatorial practice, she has been awarded fellowships that supported residencies with Aomori Contemporary Art Center, Aomori, Japan; the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), New York (by Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation); and Theertha International Artists’ Collective, Colombo. Her contribution as an art writer and editor was recognised in 2015 when she received the ‘Art Scribes Award’ for emerging art writers of Indian origin.