Cambridge Visual Culture Seminar: Queer Curation and Aesthetic Practices: Gayatri Gopinath and Sunil Gupta in Conversation

In Unruly Visions: The Aesthetic Practices of Queer Diaspora (2018) Gayatri Gopinath examines a range of contemporary visual practices to understand the relationship between queer diaspora and visuality. She demonstrates how the process of queer curation allows for new intimacies and archives to form. The work of photographer Sunil Gupta (b. New Delhi 1953) epitomizes this practice of curation. By making gay bodies visible, Gupta’s work brings the intersection of the political and personal and the public and private to the fore. This conversation between Gopinath and Gupta will seek to understand the stakes of creating and interpreting archives of the contemporary queer diaspora.

Gayatri Gopinath is Professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, and the Director of the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at New York University. She works at the intersection of transnational feminist and queer studies, postcolonial studies, and diaspora studies, and is the author of two monographs: Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Duke University Press, 2005), and Unruly Visions: The Aesthetic Practices of Queer Diaspora (Duke University Press, 2018). She has published numerous essays on gender, sexuality, and queer diasporic visual art and culture in anthologies and journals such as Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, GLQ, and Social Text, as well as in art publications such as PIX: A Journal of Contemporary Indian Photography, Tribe: Photography and New Media from the Arab World, and ArtReview Asia.

Sunil Gupta (b. New Delhi 1953) MA (RCA) PhD (Westminster) lives in London and has been involved with independent photography as a critical practice for many years focusing on race, migration and queer issues. His retrospective will open at Ryerson Image Center, Toronto 2022. He is a Professorial Fellow at UCA, Farnham. His latest book is “London 1982” Stanley Barker 2021 and his current exhibitions include; “The New Pre-Raphaelites” the the Holburne Museum, Bath. His work is in many public collections including; Tokyo Museum of Photography, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Royal Ontario Museum, Tate and the Museum of Modern Art. His work is represented by Hales Gallery (New York, London), Stephen Bulger Gallery (Toronto) and Vadehra Art Gallery (New Delhi).