AAAinA is honored to present an evening of research sharing and conversation between the art historians Ananya Sikand and Rattanamol Singh Johal. 

In examining the traces and temporalities that surface in the lives and works of the Indian artists Rummana Hussain (1952-1999) and Nasreen Mohamedi (1937-1990), this program will bring together the practices of two artists who are typically not read together due to their formal divergences. 

Sikand will present a talk drawing on her larger doctoral dissertation project, Muslim Unbelonging: Conceptual and Performance Art in Post-Independence South Asia (1970-2020), which reframes histories of conceptual and performance art of South Asia and its diaspora via the dialectic of belonging and unbelonging. She will then be joined in conversation by Dr. Johal. 

Registration through our Eventbrite portal is required for all AAAinA programming. Suggested donation is $5. The minimum required donation is $1. Light refreshments will be provided. Programs begin promptly, so please arrive 5-10 minutes early.

Bios:

Ananya Sikand is a Forsyth Visiting Graduate Student Fellow at the University of Michigan as well as a doctoral candidate in Art History and an affiliated student of the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies and the South Asia Center at the University of Washington. She researches modern and contemporary art, with a focus on South Asia within broader transnational Asian and global contexts. Her dissertation-in-progress, entitled “Muslim Unbelonging: Conceptual and Performance Art in Post-Independence South Asia (1970-2020)” reframes histories of conceptual and performance art via the dialectic of belonging and unbelonging. From 2024-26, she was the inaugural Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives (C-MAP) Cities Fellow focusing on Bombay/Mumbai at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. At MoMA, she conceived the research and programming activities of the C-MAP Bombay/Mumbai group and co-edited the museum’s online research platform post. Most recently, she contributed research towards the exhibition Nilima Sheikh: Fractured Skies (2026-27). Sikand earned her MA in Contemporary Art and Art Theory of Asia and Africa at SOAS, University of London, and has previously worked at the Seattle Asian Art Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the CSMVS (formerly the Prince of Wales Museum), India.  

Rattanamol Singh Johal is the Shireen and Afzal Ahmad Assistant Professor in History of Art at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His current book project, Forms of Despair, offers an account of experimental, lens and time-based art emerging in India in the final decades of the twentieth century as metropolitan artists were confronted with the limitations and failings of their postcolonial, cosmopolitan imaginaries. Between 2016 and 2024, Johal occupied various positions at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, most recently serving as Assistant Director of the International Program. At MoMA, he worked on the global research initiative, C-MAP, the online research platform, post, and the Primary Documents publication series. He co-curated the exhibition, Video After Video: The Critical Media of CAMP (2025) and was a member of the curatorial team for Signals: How Video Transformed the World (2023). He also co-chaired the Museum’s Contemporary Working Group (2023-24) and co-organized the collection displays Staging Selves (2024-27) and War Remembers Me (2024-25). Johal curated the exhibition, Homage: Queer Lineages on Video (2025) at the Wallach Art Gallery of Columbia University, and has served as co-convener and moderator of the annual Experimenter Curators’ Hub since 2025.