SIGHTINGS 43

In Conversation with Swapnaa Tamhane, Ishita Tiwary & Prasad Bidaye

Tuesday May 13, 2025, 5:30 – 7:00 pm
In English
At the Gallery
Free

Facebook Event

Join artist Swapnaa Tamhane and professors Ishita Tiwary (Cinema, Concordia University) and Prasad Bidaye (English, Humber College) for a dynamic conversation centered on Tamhane’s textile installation Never Was A Man, presented in the SIGHTINGS cube. Located in the lobby of Concordia University’s Hall Building, a site of both historic and ongoing student protests, the work reflects on the legacy of Rohith Vemula, the Dalit PhD student whose 2016 death ignited nationwide demonstrations across India. With Tamhane’s piece as a focal point, the speakers will crisscross between themes of access to education, student wellness, protest, and solidarity in both South Asian and North American contexts.

Prasad Bidaye is a Professor in the Department of English at Humber Polytechnic, Toronto. His teaching focuses on composition, critical thinking and creative nonfiction, while his research and writing crisscrosses between late twentieth-century electronic dance music, South Asian literatures-religions-politics, and “outernationalist” cultures. His work has been published in scholarly spaces like Canadian Literature, University of Toronto Quarterly, The Myth Awakens (forthcoming), and Transnationalism, Activism, Art as well as more public-facing ones like Exclaim!, Milton Champion, Africa is a Country, IR :: Indigenous Resistance’s Afreekan Dub Biographies series and his Substack, The Prasonik Files (prasonik.substack.com).

Swapnaa Tamhane’s art practice is dedicated to the material histories of cotton and jute, which led to making handmade paper, archival research, and textile installations. She collaborates closely with artisans in Kutch, Gujarat, India, in a skill-sharing process. Tamhane holds an MFA in Fibres & Material Practices from Concordia University, Montreal. Past exhibitions have been held at Nature Morte, Delhi; articule, Montreal; Sculpture Park, Jaipur; Green Art Gallery, Dubai; Victoria & Albert Museum, Dundee, Scotland; with solo exhibitions at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, and Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey. Upcoming exhibitions will be held at the Mead Art Museum, Amherst, Massachusetts, and The Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles.

Ishita Tiwary is Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair at Concordia University. Her research interests include video cultures, media infrastructures, migration, contraband media practices, and media aesthetics. Her first book Video Culture in India: The Analog Era (Oxford University Press, 2024) narrates the history of video technology in India since its introduction in the 1980s, locating the moment within the country’s socio-political context. She also directs the research lab Raah which aims to examine the intersection of migratory processes and media practices. Raah’s project is a community-driven model, which hopes to bring together scholars, activists and community partners in a single space, becoming the first institutional hub in Canada for the study of media and migration.