Geeta Kapur

Biography

Geeta Kapur is an art critic and curator whose work engages with issues related to national and postcolonial paradigms, heterodox modernisms, critical contemporaneity and the curatorial positioning of artworks in India and the Global South.

Among her many curatorial projects are the co-curated subTerrain: Artworks in the Cityfold, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2003); Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis, Tate Modern, London (2001); Dispossession, Indian section, First Johannesburg Biennale (1995); and Indian Contemporary Art, Royal Academy of Arts, London (1982). For Sharjah Biennial 8 (2007), she was an invited speaker at the Art and Ecology symposium and served on the jury for the Sharjah Biennial Art Prize. For Sharjah Biennial 7 (2005), she participated in the panel entitled Comparative Biennialicities.
Her publications include The Enigma of an Open Enclosure (with Kavita Singh) (Sharjah Art Foundation, 2013); When Was Modernism: Essays on Contemporary Cultural Practice in India (Tulika, 2000) and Contemporary Indian Artists (Vikas, 1978).

Kapur received the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award conferred by the Government of India, for her contribution to the arts (2009). She currently serves as a trustee and advisory board member of the Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation, New Delhi, and as an editorial advisor and trustee of Marg Publications, Mumbai. She is also a member of the advisory board of Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong, and ARTmargins. She has previously taught at a number of universities, including the Indian Institutes of Technology and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Kapur holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Miranda House, University of Delhi (1962); a master’s degree in fine arts from New York University, New York (1964); and a master’s degree in criticism from the Royal College of Art, London (1970).

She was born in 1943 in New Delhi, where she continues to live and work.

SAF participation:
March Meeting 2021
Sharjah Biennial 7, 8 and 11