Meet The Selection Committee Members

Amit Kumar Jain is the Associate Vice President and Auction lead for Living Traditions: Folk and Tribal Art at Saffronart. Since 2002, he has been actively involved in the field of South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art and has experience in museum and collection management, acquisitions, curation and residency management. He served as the Head of Programs at Devi Art Foundation (New Delhi) from 2006-2010 and furthered his interest in Pre-Modern and Modern Indian Art as Director-Special Initiatives at The Savara Foundations for the Arts (New Delhi). He was also invited to curate the third edition of Colombo Art Biennale in 2014. He continues to be on the board of the Colombo Art Biennale and Nepal Arts Council.

Dr. Annapurna Garimella is a Delhi-based designer and an art historian. Her research focuses on late medieval Indian architecture and the history and practices of vernacular art forms in India after Independence. She heads Jackfruit Research and Design, an organization with a specialized portfolio of design, research and curatorial. Her most recent curatorial projects include Vernacular, in the Contemporary (Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi) and Faith: Manu Parekh in Benaras 1980-2012 (Art Alive, New Delhi) and Drawing 2014 (Gallery Espace, New Delhi). Her most recent book is about collaboration between a Rajasthani miniature painter and expatriate American photographer and is titled The Artful Life of R. Vijay (Serindia, 2016).

Anuradha Kapur was at the helm of the National School of Drama (NSD) in Delhi for six years and was instrumental in putting together the foundation for NSD Bangalore. She now focuses directing plays. She is the author of Actors, Pilgrims, Kings and Gods: The Ramlila of Ramnagar. She is one of the founder members of Vivadi, a working group of painters, musicians, writers and theatre practitioners, formed in 1989. Her theatre work has travelled to countries including Germany, Japan, Brazil, UK, and Korea. In 2004, Anuradha was awarded the Sangeet Natak Award for Direction in the Theatre.

Deepanjana is the International Head of Department for Contemporary Indian & Southeast Asian Art. Prior to joining Christie’s, she had been an independent curator in New York City and has numerous exhibitions of contemporary Indian art to her credit. Deepanjana played a central role in acquiring the business of the estate of Francis Newton Souza, one of the most important historical sales in the category. She is the recipient of several awards, including a grant from the Mellon Foundation (ArtStor) for her photographic documentation of the Ellora cave temples.

Dinesh Khanna is the co-founder of the Delhi Photo Festival. The last 25 years have seen him involved in creating images for advertising, editorial and corporate clients, specifically in the area of food, still-life, people and interiors. His solo exhibitions include ‘In my own World’ shown at Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Varanasi, and ‘Living Faith’ which was exhibited at Delhi, Kolkata, New York and San Francisco. He has also published three books – Bazaar, Living Faith and Right of the Line - The President’s Bodyguard, which was commissioned by the Rashtrapati Bhawan and Sahapedia. Dinesh is also the co-founder and managing trustee of Nazar Foundation, which has been set up to promote photography as an art-form.

Hanif Kureshi is an artist and designer working with street and typography. He is an Artistic Director and Co-founder of St+art India Foundation which aims to make art accessible to a larger audience in India through the series of street art festivals. His ongoing project, handpaintedtype.com attempts to conserve and archive the vernacular street typography of India. His work has been exhibited at the London Design Biennale, Venice Biennale, Centre Pompidou Paris, Triennale Design Museum, Milan among others. In 2016, GQ named Hanif as one of 50 most influential young Indians.

Manjari Nirula has been instrumental in reviving languishing crafts, the marketing of craft products and  the participation of craft-persons in regional and international fairs. The vice-president of World Crafts Council Asia-Pacific Region and the Crafts Council of India, Manjari has been coordinating the UNESCO Award of Excellence Programme for South Asia since 2004. She has served on the International Jury for this Award in South East Asia and Central Asia.

Manu Chandra is the chef partner, responsible for the hugely fun and first of its kind Gastropub brand – Monkey Bar, The Fatty Bao and more recently Toast & Tonic. He is also executive chef of the much-acclaimed Olive Beach in Bangalore. Manu enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) Hyde Park, New York. A lover of slow cooking, Manu leans towards painstakingly controlled and cooked things, a process that enables one to extract flavours and textures. On the flip side, he’s fond of incredibly fast cooking, which keeps the integrity of ingredients and freshness intact. A minimalist, he believes that removing an ingredient rather than adding one usually improves the flavour of a dish.

Mithu Sen studied visual art from Visva Bharati, Santiniketan and Glasgow School of Art, UK. Life being the medium of her practice, she pushes the limits of language, questioning the pre-codified hierarchical etiquettes within the politics of tabooed (cultural and gendered) identity, psycho-sexuality, radical hospitality and lingual anarchy. She has participated and exhibited widely including Guggenheim Museum, New York; TATE Modern, London; Queens Museum, New York; Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, USA; KNMA, India; MOMAT, Japan; PEM, USA; S.M.A.K Museum, Belgium; Palais De Tokyo, Paris; Art Unlimited, Basel; Albertina Museum, Vienna; etc. Sen received Skoda award, India 2010 and Prudential Eye Award, Asia 2015

Odette Mascarenhas is a food historian and critic, author and television host. Her stint as the food & beverage manager at the Taj Group of Hotels has helped her define a keen palate towards the nuances of different ingredients used in food preparations. Her passion for the written word is the reason she has nine books to her credit. Her ninth book, The Culinary Heritage of Goa, brings alive the kitchen tradition of Goan households all around the state. She is the co-founder of the Goan Culinary Club – a non-profit venture which strives to preserve the authenticity of Goan cuisine and researches lost recipes of the past with local chefs and restaurateurs.

Prashant Panjiar is a self-taught photographer. He has worked as a photojournalist and editor in mainstream media at Patriot newspaper (1984-1986), India Today (1986-1995) and the Outlook Group of Publications (1995-2001). Since 2001 Panjiar has been working independently as a photographer specializing in reportage, editorial and documentary photography, a photo editor and curator. Panjiar has curated all 3 editions of the Delhi Photo Festival of which he is the co-founder and co-creative director. He has served on the jury of the World Press Photo Awards, the China International Press Photo Competition, Indian Express Press Photo Awards and the National Foundation of India’s annual photography fellowship. Being one of India’s leading photo-practitioners, Panjiar is actively involved in mentoring younger photographers.

Born and educated in Chennai, Premilla did her MBBS from Madras Medical College. On completion, she travelled to Ireland to specialize in Ophthalmology from the Royal College of Surgeons, Dublin, Ireland. It was during her stay in Ireland that she developed an interest in art. Visiting museums and galleries, seeking out public art became a part of her life. In 1996, Gallery Sumukha was born in Bangalore, Premilla began to organize Print Making Workshops, Sculpture workshops in the Gallery premises which were very well received. She also began to participate in International Art fairs to showcase Indian Contemporary Art.

Priya Pall is the Curatorial Director for Bikaner House. She was the Executive Director for INSERT2014, and Curator for India Art Fair 2009. She was the Curator for the contemporary art section, and consulting museologist for Heritage Transport Museum, Manesar. During her career, spanning over 20 years, she has worked closely with some of the leading artists, galleries, and organizations, such as India Art Fair, Outset India, Embassy of France in India, National Museum, Sanskriti Foundation, The Birla Academy of Art & Culture, Heritage Transport Museum, Times of India, India Today, Ratnakar Bank, Amity Education Group, Hotel Le Meridien, HK Museum of Art, and Haus der Kunst (Munich), and L.A. County Museum of Art. In 2011, Priya Pall was awarded the Art Think South Asia (ATSA) Fellowship by the Goethe Institute.

C. Raman Schlemmer is the curator and keeper of the, The Oskar Schlemmer Theatre Estate and Archives, Bühnen Archiv Oskar Schlemmer. He has been a driving force behind the first Oskar Schlemmer retrospectives in the USA, Holland, Spain, France, Germany, and exhibitions in major museums around the world on the Bauhaus and avant-garde dance movements. He has written prolifically on the subject of his grandfather’s life and artistic legacy. In 2016, he curated the visionary exhibition “Oskar Schlemmer. L’homme qui danse. Tänzermensch. The Dancing Artist” at Centre Pompidou Metz, France. C. Raman Schlemmer of Indo-German descent is the son of the painter C. Paran and U. Jaïna Schlemmer, daughter of Tut and Oskar Schlemmer, a stage and costume designer and expert on her father’s work.

Ranjit Barot is a drummer, singer, music composer, music director and music arranger. He started playing at the age of 12, encouraged by his mother, the legendary Kathak dancer, Sitara Devi. Ranjit has also had a long career in composition and music production, working out of his own studio facility, in Mumbai, India. His career spans projects over the last almost four decades as a featured drummer and arranger for musicians such as R.D. Burman, right up to A.R. Rahman. Ranjit was the music composer and sound designer for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Commonwealth Games Delhi 2010, and Music Producer for MTV Unplugged (Season 1 & 2).

Ranjit Hoskote is a poet, cultural theorist and curator. In his role as an art critic, Ranjit has authored a critical biography as well as a major retrospective study of the painter Jehangir Sabavala, and also monographs on the artists Atul Dodiya, Tyeb Mehta, Sudhir Patwardhan, Baiju Parthan, Bharti Kher and Iranna GR. Having curated his first exhibition when he was 25, Ranjit has conceived and organised twenty exhibitions of contemporary Indian as well as international art since 1994. He was recently co-curator of Former West: Documents, Constellations, Prospects, Berlin, 2013. His other curated projects include, The Needle on the Gauge, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Parkside, 2012; Everyone Agrees: It’s About to Explode, Indian Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennale, Venice, 2011. He has edited the collection Dom Moraes: Selected Poems (2012) and is the author of over 25 books including I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded (2011).

Riyas Komu is the co-founder and secretary of the Kochi Biennale Foundation (KBF), and a multi-media artist and activist working towards encouraging art education and developing art infrastructure in India. His critically acclaimed political works have been exhibited extensively in India and abroad, which include several key works that focus specially on the political and cultural history of Kerala. Riyas, who shuttles between Kerala and Mumbai, was one of two artists from India to be selected by curator Robert Storr for the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007 and he represented the Iranian Pavilion at Venice Biennale in 2015. Being at the helm of KBF he has initiated the Children’s Biennale, Students Biennale and Artists Cinema as part of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. He is currently working as a director of programmes for the Foundation and also develops projects focusing on Art Education in India.

Sanjeev Bhargava has designed some of the most admired cultural events that the capital has witnessed in recent times — in the areas of dance, music, theatre, art and cinema – such as Bhakti Utsav, Delhi Jazz Festival, the South Asian Bands Festival and Ananya at the backdrop of Purana Qila remains as one of the biggest dance festivals of India. Through Seher, the cultural organization he founded in 1991, he has also discovered fresh talent from remote corners of India. Many of today’s well-known artists were given their first break by him. Most recently, he was instrumental in conceptualising the Udaipur World Music Festival February 2016, a world music event featuring 100 artists from over 15 countries including Italy, France, Spain and others. This festival has since become an annual event and set a benchmark for presentation of International artists from across the globe.

A career spanning 28 years, she has spent 20 years in the fashion and lifestyle retail space. She spent twelve years spearheading and driving the growth of Fabindia’s retail network of over a 100 stores across various formats. She quit a successful career to follow her dreams, she is - an entrepreneur, who co-founded and now spearheads Curation & Design for an online retail portal called Jaypore, for high on design products from India. Her latest venture is a concept restaurant in Goa, Mustard, which is an outcome of a shared passion for food and unique experiences that offers Bengali and French Cuisine.

Shubha Mudgal has been trained by some of the finest musicians and musicologists in India. Born into a musically-dedicated family and trained by eminent scholar-musician-composer Pandit Ramashreya Jha ‘Ramrang’. In addition to being a performer, Shubha Mudgal is also recognised as a composer. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Padma Shri in 2000, and the Gold Plaque Award for Special Achievement in Music at the 34th Chicago International Film Festival, 1998, and the Yash Bharati Samman from the Government of Uttar Pradesh in 2015. Shubha Mudgal was also a Nana Shirgaokar Visiting Research Professor for traditional music at Goa University.

Tanusree Shankar is the choreographer and the chief inspiration of the academy and troupe bearing her name. Tanusree, who trained for seven years under Amala Shankar, has developed a kind of choreography, which reaches out to audiences worldwide. She choreographed several events, including the Asian Games, the Festival of India in the USSR and the Wills World Cup Cricket Championships. In 2007, she was the chief choreographer for the National Folk Dance Festival. Tanusree choreographed an Indo-French Ballet called Padmavati directed by Indian film maker, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, in Paris in 2008.A Sangeet Natak Akademi winner, Tanusree instructs master classes at Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center.

The suave and gritty CEO of Kala Ghoda based, online auction house AstaGuru, Tushar Sethi is a Business Finance major from Regents Business School in London. In the year 2005 he conceived and executed 'The Arts Trust' which is India’s leading art portal responsible for providing art lovers and collectors with in-depth art market analytics, news about current & future trends and also features articles written by international art collectors and curators. The subsequent step was to set up a state of the art gallery which took shape in the year 2007. Tushar Sethi founded 'Institute of Contemporary Indian Art' in the heart of Mumbai’s art district Kala Ghoda. A renowned art connoisseur he has also curated the art exhibits at the prestigious St Regis Hotel in Mumbai. His keen eye and impeccable knowledge of Art, leverages him with insights of current & future trends.

Vivek Sahni studied Economics at Delhi University and then an Associate Degree in Communications Design from Parsons School of Design in New York. After moving back to India, he started his eponymous design company Vivek Sahni Design in 1993 which Specialized in communications, product and environmental design. He co-founded Kama Ayurveda in 2002 and is responsible for the brand's tremendous success both in India as well as International markets. Vivek is passionate about design and the environment and is using design in its infinite forms from technology, to supply chain, to product, package and store design to create a new kind of company.