Display practices have increasingly embraced public engagement and archival afterlives, foregrounding the politics of lived spaces: who gains access, which voices are heard, and why. Participation, spectatorship, screen cultures and mass media have played fluctuating, and at times contradictory, roles in shaping these dynamics. Our digital traces, both intentional and beyond our control, have compelled artists to confront a fractured yet expanding common ground of contemporary discourse.
This talk examines the Alkazi Foundation's image-oriented projects, as well as allied curatorial ventures that interrogate the stakes of autonomy and freedom at this moment of catalysing public movements, particularly in relation to the Indian subcontinent. If the constriction of (artistic or any other) voice inevitably precedes future silencing, what cultural mandates do the images we share and circulate carry? What symbolic or social weight must they bear?
Rahaab Allana is Curator and Publisher at the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts, New Delhi, Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society (UK), and was honorary Research Associate in the Department of Visual Anthropology at University College London. A leading voice in South Asian photography and visual culture, he has curated exhibitions, commissioned publications and delivered talks internationally. Founder of ASAP | art, a pioneering platform for South Asian visual practitioners, Allana has edited critical volumes Unframed (HarperCollins India/Alkazi Foundation, 2023) and Another Lens (Tulika Books/West Heavens, 2024) on lens-based practices and image histories. He was recently awarded Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the Government of France.
CREAM Presents Rahaab Allana
The Unpredictable Commons
Autonomy and Exhibitionary Practice | The Alkazi Foundation
Thursday, 8 October, 6–7:30pm
Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street W1B 2HW
Click here to book a place
Image: Rada Akbar, ‘Between Expired Places’, 2025, Installation view from Displacement, Serendipity Arts Festival 2025, Goa. Photograph: Philippe Calia and Sunil Thakkar
