Conference: The Art of Independence: Visions of the Past and Future in India and Pakistan

Conveners: Faisal Devji and Mallica Kumbera Landrus

Speakers: Alexander Sturgis, Faisal Devji, Meghnad Desai, Kishwar Desai, Nick Merriman, Hammad Nasar, Yasmin Khan (Chair), Kajri Jain, Rachel Dwyer, Salma Siddique, Shailendra Bhandare (Chair), Mallica Kumbera Landrus, Partha Mitter, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Nilima Sheikh, Sumathi Ramaswamy, Gautham Shiralagi, Zehra Jumabhoy, Maria Misra, Chris Pinney (delivering the Dasturzada Dr Jal Pavry Memorial Lecture)

At Midnight on the 15th of August 1947 India and Pakistan achieved their freedom from British Rule. This Conference commemorates the 70th anniversary of that independence. Artists, curators, filmmakers and academics stage a multidisciplinary and multi-media discussion that asks: What futures did the citizens of these new nations envision for themselves? How might we think about the midnight hour, and its many imagined futures, in retrospect?

Day 1, Dreams and Nightmares:

Spectacle, Partition and Progress

12 October 2017, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Day 2, Futures Lost and Found:

Citizenship and Contemporary Art

13 October 2017, Courtauld Institute of Art, London

Further Information

For further information or to register, please contact Maxime Dargaud-Fons on asian@sant.ox.ac.uk