Dear All,

The Department of Visual Arts is delighted to invite you to the fifth talk in the Visual Arts Colloquium Series, Monsoon 2026.

Title:  THE IMAGE IS NOT INNOCENT: POLITICS OF TEXT, IMAGE, AND REPRESENTATION  

Speaker: Anupam Roy

Date & Time: 6th November 2026 / 1.30 pm
Venue: Visual Arts Studio (near sports block)

Synopsis:
This talk reflects on the relationship between text, image, and politics through the artist's artistic practice and ongoing research. Moving across drawing, painting, posters, zines, photography, video, and field-based work, Roy will discuss how images are produced, circulated, and made political, and how they participate in structures of power rather than simply representing them. Central to the discussion is what Roy describes as “representational impossibility”: the point at which images and language become inadequate to the social and political realities they attempt to address. Drawing from his recent works, including …ing: Sceneries Without Sovereignty, Anupam Roy will consider land, labour, dispossession, collective resistance, and the possibilities of developing a visual language that works through these contradictions.

About the Speaker:

Anupam Roy (b. 1985) is a multidisciplinary artist, researcher, and educator based in India. His practice spans drawing, painting, photography, posters, zines, graffiti, video, and performance, emerging from long-term engagements with questions of land, labour, ecology, dispossession, and collective struggle. His work has been presented at Frieze London, the New Museum Triennial, Asia Now, Colomboscope Festival, India Art Fair, Project 88, Drawing Room London, and Vadehra Art Gallery. He is actively involved in artist-led and research-based initiatives including Panjeri Artists’ Union, Jinn, Khandera Art Space, Dadri Forecast, and The Locust Arts and Letters Collective. A recipient of the Prince Claus Fund CAREC Award and the FICA Emerging Artist Award, he currently teaches as Assistant Professor in the Department of Art, Media and Performance at Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence, Delhi-NCR.

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We look forward to having you with us for the talk. 

Warm regards,

Visual Arts Department