Join us as Saba Hasan, multi-media visual artist will be in conversation with Meera Menezes, independent curator and writer. Moderated by Neha Zooni Tickoo, curator of the exhibition, the panel discussion will unravel the nuances of the artist’s exhibition on display and the intricacies of her wider art practice. 

Guest speakers: 

Meera Menezes is an art writer and independent curator. She has written extensively on modern and contemporary Indian art over the past three decades and is the author of V.S. Gaitonde: Sonata of Solitude. She anchored the contemporary arts magazine, Art India, in Delhi since its inception and is a regular contributor to the international arts publication Artforum.  She has written for Art Asia Pacific, The Hindu, Mint, Take on Art, The Indian Quarterly, The Wire, Firstpost and Critical Collective among several others. Her most recent curatorial projects include Legal Alien, Yuva Sumbhava, Phantom Limb as well as Shadow Lines: Experiments with Light, Line and Liminality (2019. She is the organizer of the annual Anant Curatorial Forum that focuses on curatorial practice. 

Menezes has done her Masters in German Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, and has worked as a TV-journalist and producer at the South Asia Bureau of ARD, Germany’s largest public service broadcaster, for over a decade.

Roobina Karode serves as the Director and Chief Curator of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) in New Delhi, a role she has held since the museum’s inception in 2010. As a curator, educator, and art critic, she leads the museum’s mission to showcase and promote contemporary and modern Indian art on a global scale.

With over 16 years of teaching experience at esteemed institutions such as the School of Arts & Aesthetics at JNU, the National Museum Institute, the College of Art, and Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi, Karode has also made significant contributions as a curator. Her career is marked by over 50 major exhibitions, including retrospectives of under-represented inter-generational Indian artists like Nasreen Mohamedi, Himmat Shah, Jeram Patel, Vivan Sundaram, and Rameshwar Broota.

Karode’s expertise extends to international collaborations, with exhibitions at renowned venues such as the Reina Sofia Museum in Spain, the MET Breuer in New York, and the Musée Guimet in Paris. In 2019, she curated the Indian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, recognised among the top five must-see pavilions.

At KNMA, Karode has championed women artists with retrospectives on figures like Nalini Malani and Arpita Singh, while curating exhibitions that explore themes of time, memory, ecology, and modernist practices in post-Independence art. She has also ventured into avant-garde and underexplored cultural narratives, including a recent collaboration on South Asian popular culture with the Sharjah Art Foundation.

Karode holds postgraduate specialisations in Art History and Education, supported by a Fulbright Fellowship (2000) and a Ford Teaching Fellowship (2005–07), which provide a strong academic foundation for her curatorial and leadership roles.

Guiding KNMA’s dynamic exhibitions and programming, Karode’s forward-looking vision emphasises research, innovation, and new knowledge forms, solidifying KNMA’s place on the global art stage.

Artist: 

Saba Hasan is a leading contemporary artist with a multimedia repertoire developed over three decades of highly distinguished practice. She is best known for the conceptual and lyrical strength of her works, layered with undertones her art evokes forces of time, nature and personal histories in a profound nuanced voice. Stemming from her training in anthropology Saba’s art practice is further informed by cultural and social perspectives producing a rich interplay of ideas and an idiosyncratic creative vision. Her conversation-based video La Verite/ Haqeeqat explores notions of truth in its philosophical, ethical and political facets. It was screened at the Sarai Reader 09 curated by RAQS Media Collective and finalist for the Celeste Contemporary Art Prize 2014, Milan. Saba's walks in cities she has lived in like Delhi, Paris, Lausanne, New York have produced her acclaimed photographs of water bodies which evince a strong metaphysical cadence such as Walking in Deer Park. A soundscape emerging from these walks was aired on Osso Radio Portugal 2013 as part of an international public project mapping 25 cities through sound. With her book sculptures Saba ushers in philosophical abstractions related to truth, haqeeqat and faith revealing pitfalls in human knowledge as she fashions books into fragile intimate art pieces imbuing them with fresh meaning. Saba’s works have been exhibited at major venues like the 55th International Venice Biennale via the Imago Mundi Foundation, the Bilbao Arte Fondazio, Spain, the National Gallery of Art Colombo, the Fortezza Da Basso Florence, the Hohenburg Castle, Salzburg, Assab One Milan, the Chelsea Film Festival New York, Fisura International Film Festival, Mexico, Vienna Film Awards and the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi. Recipient of the Raza National Award for Painting 2006, the Pollock - Krasner Foundation Grant, 2022, The Mannheim Arts Festival Best Art Film Award 2023, The FICIMAD Best Screenplay Award 2024, and finalist at the Vienna International Film Awards 2023, Saba works from her studios in Delhi, Goa and New York.

Moderator & Curator:

Neha ‘Zooni’ Tickoo is an independent dance artist and a curator with Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Delhi. She finished her Master of Arts (2014) in Performance and Culture Studies from Ambedkar University, Delhi. In 2019, she co-curated Brief Parables of Utopia - An exhibition of Indian contemporary artists at MOMus (Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art) Thessaloniki, Greece. In 2024, she co-curated Ulta Pulta – The World Upside Down, an exhibition of editorial cartoons at KNMA Art-passage. Independently she curated Plaits-Mapping Textures Across Time (2024) – solo exhibition of works by Audrone Brazauskite, Lithuanian origin artist based in India, at Bikaner House, Delhi. 

In her performative projects, she has collaborated with renowned curators like RAQS Media Collective, and thespian Deepan Sivaraman in the past. She represented India at the India Festival Hamburg, Germany in 2019. In 2022, she had the opportunity to perform at the Husain-Doshi Gufa, Ahmedabad where she interpreted the myth and the story of River Saraswati. She is deeply interested in exploring and existing in physical spaces creatively, hence both exhibition curation and her performative work immersed in poetry, empowers her projects in that direction. She continues to actively curate programmes, artists talks, immersive events and film screenings for KNMA.