To celebrate International Women’s Day, tune in to hear from powerful and eclectic voices from the World

“If more attention were paid to female thought perhaps we might reach something called progress." —Artist Nalini Malani

For Immediate Release

With significant retrospectives and women-led shows being organized by museums and galleries, the female voice in Indian art is stronger than ever. Since Amrita Sher-Gil the Indian art world has undeniably been defined by the seminal works and intellectual movements of the likes of pathbreaking pioneer artists- who have shaped the canon through feminine and feminist perspectives. But what of the increasingly women-led systems of patronage that have paved the way for such creative voices to be heard, recognised and inducted into the canon of non-gendered and non-binary high art?

To mark International Women’s Day 2021, Avid Learning presents Female Agency in Art a session that celebrates the significant roles women have played and continue to play in Indian Art, arts engagement and art patronage.

Please read on for more details:

This fascinating live session will seek to highlight and champion professionalism and the advancement of women in the business and wider field. This session will explore women’s diverse contributions to the arts from a transcultural, transnational and transhistorical perspective, reflecting global and historical diversity.

Artist and Programme Manager of the Students' Biennale, KBF Faiza Hasan, Curator & Co-Founder St+art India Foundation Giulia Ambrogi and Art Collector, Philanthropist and Founder, Gujral Foundation Feroze Gujral will be in conversation with Writer and Historian Prof. Partha Mitter.

Discover how these extraordinary women who through their activities as supporters or producers of art have challenged societal limitations and upended the status quo. Despite their varied historical and geographical circumstances, all these women have believed in the power of art and its ability to transcend boundaries, labels and definitions.

This session will explore the trajectory of female agency in the arts, specific patronage practices attributed to women, the nuanced relationship between gender, performance and power and feminist inroads and breakthroughs made in the field. This session will also explore the specifics of artist, curator, institutional director/ dealer, historian and theorist- as being influenced or shaped by their own gendered view.

These dynamic speakers will also discuss the role of education, opportunity, access and more in determining their own journeys.

Join us to explore a feminine future among the creative leadership in the arts today.

When: Thursday, 11th March 2021 | 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM RSVP: www.avidlearning.in Press Email: Ayeshah Dadachanji on [email protected]

About the Speakers

Faiza Hasan completed her MFA from the University of Hyderabad in 2014. She was a curator for the Students Biennale (2014, 2016), Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi. Her work has been exhibited in multiple cities in India, as well as in Bordeaux, France. She is currently involved with the Education and Programmes segment of the Kochi Biennale Foundation and lives and works between Hyderabad and Kochi.

Feroze Gujral is a philanthropist, art aficionado, patron, businesswoman, columnist and media personality. She is the Founder and Director of The Gujral Foundation, a non-profit trust set up in 2008, along with her husband Mohit Gujral (the son of the renowned Indian modern artist Satish Gujral). She is also the Founder Director of Outset India, the Indian chapter of Outset Contemporary Art Fund, established in 2011. Feroze is regarded as one of India’s leading art patrons. She is currently on the Trustee Board of Kochi-Muziris Biennale of which she is a Founding Patron. She was previously on the international board of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Serpentine Gallery in London, and the advisory board of IGNCA, New . Gujral also supports and funds various causes like Save the Children and White Ribbon (safe childbirth). She has for many years also been part of the young parliamentarian’s initiative for malnutrition. Gujral is a volunteer for Teach for India and was an ambassador for World Wildlife Fund. She has also been brand ambassador and advisor to numerous leading international fashion brands. As a contemporary cultural commentator, she has contributed multiple articles to leading publications.

Giulia Ambrogi is a contemporary art curator. With a Master in History of Contemporary Art and Management of Cultural Heritage, she started her career at the contemporary art Museum - MAXXI, in Rome. Subsequently, she committed herself in spreading the culture of public and urban art, with a focus on the Italian and Indian landscape.She curated and initiated a few Street Art festivals in Italy and in 2014, she co-founded St+art India Foundation - India’s first platform for urban contemporary art. In 2018 she co-founded XXL Collective - an international creative agency that curates experiential art events for leading global brands as well as site-specific art interventions in private spaces. She has been lecturing in several universities both in Italy and India and has been invited as speaker in TED X talks, TV shows and relevant conferences around the themes of public art and smart cities.

Partha Mitter, (Honorary D.Lit. Courtauld Institute, London), Emeritus Professor Art History, University of Sussex, Member Wolfson College, Oxford. He has been a Junior Research Fellow, Churchill College, Cambridge, Research Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge; Mellon Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; Member, Getty Research Institute Los Angeles; Fellow, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass, Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, of Art, Washington DC; Radhakrishnan Memorial Lecturer at All Souls College, Oxford (1992). Books: Much Maligned Monsters: History of European Reactions to Indian Art, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1977; Chicago University Paperback 1992; Oxford University Press, New Delhi 2013; Art and Nationalism in Colonial India 1850-1922, Cambridge University Press, 1994, Indian Art, Oxford Paperback, 2002; The Triumph of Modernism: India’s Artists and the Avant-Garde 1922-1947, Reaktion Books 2007; Twentieth Century Indian Art, co-editors, Partha Mitter, Parul Dave Mukherjee and Rakhee Balaram (Thames & Hudson, London, forthcoming).

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