Swati Khurana

"Papel Picado," 2006               
Inkjet digital print on photogloss paper
Courtesy of the artist
Estimated value: $400
Starting bid $200

Swati Khurana was born in India and raised in New York where she
currently lives and works. Her videos, collages, drawings, sculptures,
and installations mine personal narratives and explore immigrant
issues with a focus on gender, popular culture, and the seductive
promises made by rituals.

Khurana received a B.A. in History from Columbia University with a focus on South Asian post-colonial studies. From New York University, she received a M.A. with distinction in Studio Art and Art Criticism; there she also attended an intensive studio program at Instituto Universario Di Architettura in Venice, Italy.

Khurana has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach (FL), Henry Street Settlement (NYC), Rotunda Gallery/BCAT Joint Multimedia Studio (Brooklyn) and David & Julia White Colony (Costa Rica). She was accepted into the Bronx Museum's Artist-in-the-Marketplace Program, Aljira's Emerge Program, and has received a New Visions Grant to research and create a site-specific video in Mexico City. In 2007, she was the the Inaugural Artist-in-Residence at the Kartong Village Development Committee (The Gambia, West Africa) and received a Travel and Study Grant from the Jerome Foundation & Art and Martha Kaemmer Fund.

She has been invited to give lectures on her work at several colleges
and universities including Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Columbia, CUNY Graduate Center, Emory, Harvard, Northwesten, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania and Yale. She has shown her work locally at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Queens Museum, Jersey City Museum, Rush Arts, Queens Public Library, Bose Pacia Modern, Center for Book Arts, New York University's Asian/Pacific/American Gallery, American Museum of Natural History, Exit Art, Momenta Art, Abrons Art Center, Longwood Arts Project; nationally at Art & Culture Center of Hollywood (FL), Diaspora Vibe Gallery (FL), Lancaster Museum of Art (CA), School of the Arts Institute (IL), Contemporary Modern Art Projects (CA), and Altered Esthetics Gallery (MN); and internationally at Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo (San José, Costa Rica), Rijksakadamie (The Netherlands), Gallery Aab (Brescia, Italy), Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista (Venice, Italy), Himal's Film South Asia (Kathmandu, Nepal), Habitat Centre (New Delhi, India), and Kala Ghoda (Mumbai, India).

In addition to several community-based projects, she has served as an Artist-in-Residence through the Bronx Museum at Bronx International High School, a new public school serving recent immigrant and refugee students. In 1997, she was a founding member of the South Asian Women's Creative Collective (SAWCC), a NYC-based organization dedicated to the advancement, visibility, and development of emerging and established South Asian women artists.