LOOKING FOR ABU’L ABBAS

Radhika Subramaniam is a curator, editor and writer with an interdisciplinary practice, and a 2018-2019 GIDEST Fellow. Through exhibition, public art, and texts, she explores the poetics and politics of crises and surprises, particularly urban crowds, walking, cultures of catastrophe, art, and human-animal relationships. 

For her GIDEST Seminar, Radhika will be presenting on her ongoing project on a medieval elephant embassy. This work-in-progress draws on textual as well as ethnographic and embodied research in Germany, Italy, Tunisia, and India to tell the story—part animal biography, part narrative of migration and human-elephant relationships, and part quest—and to explore the fool’s errand as part of research.

Radhika is Associate Professor of Visual Culture at Parsons School of Design where, from 2009-17, she was the first Director/Chief Curator of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center (SJDC). She has received a Culture and Animals Foundation grant, an International Visiting Curatorship at Artspace, Sydney, a SEED Foundation Teaching Fellowship in Urban Studies at the San Francisco Art Institute, and artist/writer residencies at The Banff Center, Canada, and the Hambidge Center.