Critical Distance DIRECTORY Swapnaa Tamhane

Swapnaa Tamhane is an artist and curator, working between Canada and India. Her visual practice extends to decolonizing distinctions between art, craft, and design, while her curatorial practice is focussed on the wider South-Asian diaspora and contemporary art from India.

Tamhane graduated with a BA in Art History from Carleton University, Ottawa, an MA in Contemporary Art from the University of Manchester, and an MFA in Fibres & Material Practices from Concordia University, Montreal. She has been a Research Fellow with the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute (2009) and an International Museum Fellow with the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (2013). She has held positions as an Editor at Phaidon Press, London (2002-2006), an Assistant Curator at The Power Plant (2007-2008), Toronto, and a Producer of Contemporary Art Projects at Luminato Festival (2016). Tamhane has been a guest curator at Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, and Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, and has taught Drawing at Concordia University, Montreal, and Curatorial Studies at the University of Toronto.

Curatorial projects include CONSTITUTIONS, an exhibition that considered the body, state, labour, and caste in the work of five artists from India held at Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery (2021); and In Order to Join – the Political in a Historical Moment, an exhibition of global feminisms centered on the artist Rummana Hussain (1957-1999), whose work defined a feminist Muslim experience in post-Partition India. This exhibition was held at Städtisches Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach, Germany, and traveled to Goethe-Institut and CSMVS, Mumbai in 2015. In 2017, she curated HERE: Locating Contemporary Canadian Artists at the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, which included 23 artists from various generations. Her interests in material culture led to the publication SĀR: The Essence of Indian Design, published by Phaidon Press (2016) and co-authored by Tamhane and Rashmi Varma, and photographed by Prarthna Singh. She has been supported by SSHRC, Canada Council for the Arts, and Ontario Arts Council. In 2019, she was a juror for the Sobey Art Award, Canada, and was most recently on the board of SAVAC, Toronto (2021-2024).