In this lecture, Noor Bhangu will consider baithak, traditional and contemporary South Asian ways of gathering, to formulate her own approach to relational and activist forms of curation.

Baithak will sift through colonial and post-colonial records of gatherings to then argue for culturally-informed artistic practices, especially in the context of historical Islamic Art and contemporary art from South Asia. Through curatorial intervention, the history, value, and narratives of Islamic art objects will be called into question to articulate for more ethical and relational display strategies. Following the talk, Bhangu will invite the audience to dinner, with vegan and gluten-free options.

Noor Bhangu is a curator and scholar, whose practice employs cross-cultural encounters to interrogate issues of diaspora and indigeneity in post- and settler-colonial contexts. Through curatorial intervention, she hopes to involve politics of history, memory and materiality to problematize dominant histories and strategies of presentation.

She completed her BA in the History of Art and her MA in Cultural Studies: Curatorial Practices at the University of Winnipeg. Her curatorial practice includes projects: Overlapping Violent Histories: A Curatorial Investigation into Difficult Knowledge (2018), womenofcolour@soagallery (2018), Not the Camera, But the Filing Cabinet: Performative Body Archives in Contemporary Art (2018), Lines of Difference: The Art of Translating Islam (2019) and Digitalia (2019). In 2018, she began her PhD in Communication and Culture at Ryerson and York University in Tkaronto, Toronto.