Sonia Khurana is a visual artist based in New Delhi. She works primarily with moving image and performance, her practice includes drawing, text, sound, music, voice, architecture and installation.

Sonia Khurana’s practice deals with interiority and embodiment; and the self in relation to the world. Working with a discourse of power that is deliberately tangential, she attempts to draw critically on references to cultural and gendered identity, and the psycho-social domain. Through deliberately poetic intimations, she tries to persistently explore and re-define the space of the political.

Her early training as a painter in the late eighties, at Delhi College of Art, gradually made way for lens-based and performance related practice by the late nineties. In 1997, Sonia Khurana studied at the Royal College of Art, London, for a second Masters degree, assisted by the Inlaks Foundation Grant.   From 2002 to 2004, Sonia was invited to do a two-year Residency Programme for practice-based research at the Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam.

Khurana is part of the emerging generation of artists working with digital media in the late nineties. Her works have been shown internationally since the late nineties, including seminal exhibitions such as elles@Centre Pompidou (2009/2010), Global Feminisms exhibition in Brooklyn (2007), and several biennales and triennales [Aichi [2010], Busan[ 2004],Gwangju [2008], Liverpool 2010]

A solo exhibition of Sonia Khurana’s early moving image works titled: “lone women don’t lie’, in New Delhi in the year 2000, a part of which was held at the Goethe institute in Delhi, established her as one of the forerunners for moving image and performance in the Indian context.

Khurana’s most recent solo exhibition: Oneiric house – round about midnight[ 2014 ] consolidates a house full of ten installations, made over seven years, comprising of image music and text. The bodily experience of states of sleep and awakening are extended to denote the spectrum of ethical and aesthetic contestations concerning the idea of being dormant. Insomnia is proposed by Khurana as a self instilled state of being vigilant in the world. Oneiric house… was shown as an offsite exhibition of Kiran Nadar Museum of art, New Delhi, in collaboration with Outset India and the Gujral foundation.

Her recent participation in group shows include: Progress and hygiene, Zachenta, National Gallery of Modern art Warsaw. Poland ; The missing pavilion Jawaharlal, Nehru University, new Delhi; Ethereal, Leila Heller Gallery, New York ; The Yvonne Rainer Project. The choreography cinema, Jeu de Paume, Paris.; Difficult loves : Seven Contemporaries, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi; Aesthetic bind – Phantomata, Chemould Prescott Gallery, Bombay; Mythopoetics: Re-picturing the feminine, 1st Kochi Biennale’s collateral show. travelled to Griffith university, Brisbane, Australia;  take me elsewhere– vanity projects, New York. curator Diana Campbell; Paris-Delhi-Bombay : at the Pompidou center, Paris; video: an art, a history, at the Singapore art Museum ; Elles@Pompidou.center: a two-year-long, historical survey exhibition from the collection of Centre Pompidou, Paris.; Place time play  project: West heavens. Shanghai; Where three dreams cross: photography from the Indian subcontinent, the Whitachapel art Gallery, London. Traveled to Fotomuseum Winturthur, Zurich; India Moderna IVAM, Valencia and Billboards across the city; ARCO Madrid, video and public performance lying-down-on-the-ground;  Where in the world, Devi art foundation; Gwangju Biennale, Korea; New Delhi New Wave, Marella Gallery, Milan; Global Feminisms at the Brooklyn museum, New york; Tiger by the Tail Rose Museum, Brandies University, Boston; Global Feminism remix Davis Museum, Wellesley College, Boston; Horn, Please Kunsthmueum Bern, Switzerland; Public places Private Spaces, contemporary photography and video art in India. Newark Museum; Hungry God a survey Exhibition of contemporary Indian Art. Arario Beijing; art on the beach [inc the book, Made by Indians] Gallerie Enrico Navara; Sub-contingent : The South Asian Subcontinent in Contemporary art, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Torino, and so on…

She is currently showing in Group Mobile: inaugural exhibition for the artists’ space Villa Vassilieff, Paris And in Jeevan Chakra, at gallery Akar Prakar, Calcutta, in collaboration with the British Council, and Wellcome group, London.

Her works are in various leading private collections as well as public collections including  Centre Pompidou, Paris, Moon Chow collection, Hong kong,, Dacra Art Center, Florida, Daimler Chrysler collection, Berlin., Lekha and anupam Poddar collection [ Devi art foundation], Delhi, Spencer Museum of art, Kansas, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, India. Sonia is currently visiting faculty at the Shiv Nadar University, fine arts Department Delhi. She has done guest lectures at Rhode Island School of design, Providence, University of Western Cape in South Africa, D.I.T., Durban, National School of Drama, New Delhi, District Six Museum, Cape Town. Mohile Parikh lecture series, N.C.P.A., Bombay, M.S.University, Baroda, Chitra Kala Parishad, Bangalore, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Spenser school of art, Kansas, Lawrence. Utrecht school of art and Design, University of Newcastle, Department of Fine Arts, University of East London and at the Royal College of Art, London.