In Conversation Sutapa Biswas with Rachel Dwyer

Sutapa Biswas is an internationally renowned artist. She work across different media including painting and drawing, film, digital video, performance and photography. Her art engages with questions of identity, race and gender in relation to time, space and history. Her works are inspired by oral histories, literature and art history. She is particularly interested in the ways in which larger historical narratives collide with personal narratives. Biswas’ works have been widely reviewed and are held in numerous collections including: TATE Collections, Arts Council England, Sheffield Museums and Art Galleries, APT New York, Reed College (USA). She is currently in dialogue with a number of international institutions regarding a range of different forthcoming projects.

Rachel Dwyer is Professor Emerita of Indian Cultures and Cinema at SOAS, University of London. She took her BA in Sanskrit at SOAS, followed by an MPhil in General Linguistics and Comparative Philology at the University of Oxford. Her PhD research was on the Gujarati lyrics of Dayaram (1777-1852).

Professor Dwyer has published ten books, several of which are on Indian cinema. She has recently completed Bollywood’s India: Indian cinema as a guide to modern India for Reaktion Books, London and Hachette, India. She is currently researching the Asian elephant in India.