Nancy Adajania is a cultural theorist and curator based in Bombay. She was Joint Artistic Director of the 9th Gwangju Biennale (2012) and has curated a number of exhibitions including, most recently, a cycle of video art for ‘Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video’, Jewish Museum, New York (2015). In 2013 and 2014, Adajania taught the curatorial practice course at the Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts. In 2014, she curated the hybrid exhibition-publication project ‘Sacred/Scared’ (Latitude 28/ TAKE on Art magazine, Delhi), interweaving the expressive with the discursive by linking the exhibition to a transdisciplinary anthology.

Adajania has proposed several new theoretical models through her extensive writings on media art, public art, the biennial condition, transcultural art practices, and the relationship of art to the public sphere. She has lectured on these subjects at numerous venues including Documenta 11, Kassel; ZKM, Karlsruhe; Transmediale, Berlin; the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York; Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin; and the 3^rd FORMER WEST Research Congress: Beyond What Was Contemporary Art, Vienna.

Since the late-1990s, Adajania has written consistently on the practices of four generations of Indian women artists. She is the editor of the monograph Shilpa Gupta (Prestel, 2010) and co-author of The Dialogues Series (Popular Prakashan/ foundation b&g, Bombay 2011). She was research scholar-in-residence at BAK/ basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, 2010 and 2013. Her monographic essay on Sheba Chhachhi’s art, ‘Obey the little laws and break the great ones: A life in feminism’, is forthcoming.