Swapnaa Tamhane

CLOTH and NATION: Two Films, Two Nights
Film screenings curated by Swapnaa Tamhane

As part of Swapnaa Tamhane’s artist residency, the Centre for South Asian Critical Humanities presents two evening film screenings on 28 and 29 September: Govind Nihalani’s Party (1984) and Satyajit Ray’s Ghare Baire (1984).

The films screen on consecutive nights, with a short introduction by the artist.

Free and open to all.

Party
Govind Nihalani, 1984
Monday, September 28
5:30–7:30 PM
Venue: Council Chambers, DV 3130, UTM
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A gathering of the city’s cultural elite turns into a reckoning with privilege and political commitment, shadowed by the poet who left them to work among the dispossessed.

Ghare Baire (The Home and the World)
Satyajit Ray, 1984
Tuesday, September 29
7:00–9:00 PM
Venue: Robarts Theatre (RL 3-025), St. George Campus (downtown Toronto)
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Bengal during the Swadeshi movement, where Tagore’s critique of nationalism plays out as an intimate triangle between a progressive landlord, his wife, and a charismatic nationalist.

With Assistance From
Department of Visual Studies Student Society at the University of Toronto Mississauga
Blackwood Gallery

Artist Statement:

My research begins with the material histories of cotton and jute which led to making handmade paper, working with archives, and textile installations. I consider my practice through a lens of drawing, considering mark-making through embroidery and drawing in space with cloth or mirrors, alongside the use of more traditional drawing materials like chalk pastel or pencil. I work closely with wood block carvers, block printers, embroiderers and dyers in Kutch, Gujarat, India, in a skill-sharing and collaborative process. I am interested in dissolving and decolonizing hierarchies between art, craft, design, and everyday objects as imprinted by British colonialism in India and working with ornamentation to imbue the conceptual into the decorative. Much of my work questions how value is determined, and questions forms of display or representation.

Biography:

Swapnaa Tamhane’s art practice is dedicated to drawing and the material histories of cotton and jute. She has an MFA in Fibres & Material Practices, Concordia University, Montreal, where she was recently an Artist-in-Residence. She has been supported by SSHRC, Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, and was an International Museum Fellow with the Kulturstiftung des Bundes in 2013. Her research extends to material culture, and with designer Rashmi Varma, she wrote SĀR: The Essence of Indian Design, Phaidon Press (2016). She has exhibited her work at Nature Morte, Delhi; articule, Montreal; Sculpture Park Jaipur; Green Art Gallery, Dubai; Victoria & Albert Museum, Dundee, Scotland; and has had solo exhibitions at Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; and Surrey Art Gallery, British Columbia, Mead Art Museum, Amherst, MA, and she has been shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award 2025. She is an Artist-in-Residence at University of Toronto, Mississauga, and a Visiting Artist Fellow at Harvard University, Spring 2026.

Photograph by Colin Conces