Department of Visual Arts invites you to Colloquium Series (Monsoon 2023) with
Sreejata Roy, Adjunct Faculty, Visual Arts Department, Ambedkar University, Delhi
Friday, 29 September 2023, 3:30 PM to 4:30 PM, Venue: AC04-302
Shifting Contemporary Art Practices in India- A Praxis in Socially Engaged Art
The presentation focuses on my current Socially Engaged Art (SEA) practice, initiated in the metropolis of Delhi, India in 2007 and continuing into the present. My praxis is undertaken with ethnically diverse marginalized communities in disenfranchised localities, through projects situated at widely separated sites across the city. Directly intervening within the challenging physical spaces of these densely populated working-class neighborhoods, my cross-genre, cross-media, gender-focused practice focuses on how, via creative engagement, young people and women individually and collectively attempt to inscribe/reclaim personal socio-cultural spaces within their existent environments. The new spatial dynamics, new subjectivities, new networks, and new tropes of social inclusion/exclusion evident within the more democratic, participatory aesthetic paradigms underpinning these projects, are the concerns of my exploration as an artist within the contemporary discourse of Socially Engaged Art (SEA) in India.
Delhi-based artist, Sreejata Roy completed her Mphil from Coventry School of Art and Design, Coventry University, UK (20050, and has been a doctoral student in the Ph.D. Program at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) since 2018. At present her thesis is in the final examination process.
As an artist interested in community-related projects, Sreejata has been using classical/conventional, mixed, and digital media to produce various art forms, engaging with the community. Roy's current art practice in Delhi (2007-present) involves working with young women for over a decade through Socially Engaged Art practice, connecting the ideas of public spaces in many sprawling and congested areas and marginalized colonies inhabited by generations of migrants from the neighboring rural territory. Roy was awarded a 'Public Art' grant from the Foundation of Indian Contemporary Art (FICA) in 2008 and completed reshaping a community park in one of the marginalized neighborhoods. Apart from FICA, she has been awarded other prestigious scholarships in India, including a National Scholarship, from the Ministry of Defence, New Delhi, 1993, Community Art Grant, Khoj for International Artist Association, 2008-2009 & 2014-2016, Art- Reach India Community Art Grant 2015-2020, SEA Grant, Kiran Nadar Museum, Delhi, 2016- 2020. Internationally, she was awarded the Pro Helvetia Swiss Cultural Scholarship to work in Basel, in 2011, IASPIS, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee's International Program for Visual Artists, Malmo, Sweden in 2017, including Overseas Research Scholarship UK,2000-2004, Presidency Scholarship, International Research Scholarship, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, 2018-2021.
