Cara worked with the Museum of Art & Photography in India and Microsoft AI for Cultural Heritage as the consulting project lead for the Museum’s side, on the project – INTERWOVEN – which connected the history of South Asian textiles and their global influences. The initiative allowed academics and the general public to connect textile collections spread across different global institutions, using Microsoft’s AI tools such as Custom Vision and other Azure Cognitive Services. Our work includes managing the digitisation and cataloguing of over 2,000 unique textiles, collaborating with scholars and museum staff to write specialist content for ‘curated journeys’ across the platform, and developing content partnerships with leading museum partners around the world.
In May 2020 the National Gallery Singapore opened the exhibition, Something New Must Turn Up: Six Singaporean Artists After 1965—a major initiative consisting of multiple solo presentations that explore the diverse artistic practices of six post-independence Singaporean artists: Chng Seok Tin, Goh Beng Kwan, Jaafar Latiff, Lin Hsin Hsin, Mohammad Din Mohammad and Eng Tow. Cara worked in an editorial capacity alongside the Gallery’s publications team, collaborating closely with the designers and curators to develop the print and digital catalogues for the artist’s Goh Beng Kwan and Lin Hsin Hsin. This included copyediting the curatorial essays and interviews, as well as managing transcriptions, and working with the overall project editor and book designers.
As Australia’s leading public art gallery devoted to the collection and exhibition of photography, the MGA engages local, national and international audiences in arts and cultural experiences. Working on a project with the Museum of Art & Photography in Bengaluru, (and loaning work from their collection), Cara’s director is curating the first major retrospective of photography from India in Australia. The exhibition explores the history of Indian photography from its roots in the colonial era, to how this history informs and encourages contemporary artists in the country to critique and challenge this early history today.
The MAP Academy is an educational initiative of the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP) which aims to make the teaching of South Asian art histories equitable and accessible. Cara was involved with the project from the start, guiding it forward towards its public launch in April 2022, and remaining in an advisory capacity. Our work includes strategy and project management for researching and writing a comprehensive curriculum for the arts and working closely with the Project Leads. Our work includes building an online encyclopaedia for Indian art, led by Shrey Maurya, as well as developing interactive timelines, bibliographies, glossaries and resource databases for students, educators and scholars.
We worked in a curatorial capacity for the Museum of Art & Photography and the Bahrain National Museum to deliver the exhibition, Visions of India. Bahrain has a large Indian diasporic community with nearly half a million Indian expatriates living in the country and the goal for this project was to drive engagement between this community and the National Museum. This was achieved through combining the work of international contemporary artists with 20th century work by Indian photographers, creating a relatable dialogue between the old and the new. Visitor numbers to the museum from Indian communities grew dramatically, and we also helped forge dialogues between arts professionals in the Persian Gulf and South Asia.
Cara’s was the principle consultant for the gift-acquisition of this seminal archive of mid-century studio portraiture, numbering over 10,000 original negatives, on behalf of the Art & Photography Foundation, and we now continue to work closely with the archive. Work for the project included the high level capture of the negatives, the conservation strategy, as well as developing an in-depth research and curatorial project with the Foundation, such as the design and delivery of a major online exhibition and the commissioning of new scholarship on the archive. Working closely with the production house Faraway Originals and the film director, Naveed Mulki, we also helped produce the short film, Suresh Punjabi: Studio Suhag.
Since 2017, Cara has worked closely with the archive of one of India’s most important modern artists, Jyoti Bhatt, and since 2019 we continue to work in a consultancy capacity for this archive for the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP). Our work with the archive has included the management of its digitisation, cataloguing and preservation strategy, concerning over 60,000 negatives and 2,000 prints. We also curated the first major retrospective of the artist's photographic work (in collaboration with colleagues from the MAP Academy. We also researched, edited and wrote the exhibition catalogue, collaborating with the award-winning design firm, TSK Design, on the print publication, Time, & Time Again.
Jangarh Singh Shyam was an Indian artist from the Pardhan Gond community, whose meteoric rise in the contemporary art world ended in the tragic fate of him taking his own life, at the age of 21 in Japan. In 2019, the art historian, Dr Jyotindra Jain, wrote a groundbreaking treatise on his work, Jangarh Singh Shyam: The Conjuror’s Archive, which coincided with his first major retrospective at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in Delhi (with artworks loaned from the MAP collection). Cara worked closely with MAP, Dr Jain and the creative agency TSK Design (who designed the book), in a project-management capacity to help realise the exhibition and the catalogue, working on artwork digitisation, marketing, publishing contracts and distribution, and as the POC between the author and the designers.
Every summer since 1970, the Rencontres d’Arles has been a major influence in disseminating the best of world photography and playing the role of a springboard for photographic and contemporary creative talents. In 2015, the festival was brought to the Chinese city of Xiamen. Under the invitation of the Rencontres d’Arles and the Doors Agency in Shanghai, Cara (working for the Museum of Art & Photography) curated an exhibition on the history of photography in India, Returning the Gaze: From the Colonial to the Contemporary, as part of a wider cross-cultural initiative to promote cultural diplomacy across India and China. The exhibition included works on loan from the MAP collection, by artists Indu Antony, Anoli Perera, Gauri Gill, Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, Michael Bühler-Rose, Pushpamala N. & Clare Arni.
Cara conceptualised and project-managed the seminal book Photography In India: A Visual History from the 1850s to the Present, co-authored by Dr. Diva Gujral. We also oversaw the creative direction for the design of the book, collaborating with SMITH Studio in London. Spread over 400 pages and 10 chapters, the project was the first survey of the rich and extensive history of photography from India. Organised chronologically, it covers over 150 years of photographs, divided into ten chapters. An in-depth introduction and ten short essays contextualise the photographs in light of India's journey from colonial territory, to independent nation state.
Georges Rousse is a French contemporary artist known for large-scale photographs depicting painted alterations within architectural settings. When photographed, these complex interventions appear as perspectival, optical illusions or digital effects rather than installations within the scene itself. Working together with Georges Rousse and the curator, Amit Jain, on a special project commissioned by the Museum of Art & Photography for a collateral project of the 4th Kochi Muziris Biennale, Cara helped project manage the production of three large scale artworks at an 18th century Dutch Warehouse in the South Indian city of Fort Kochi.
William Dalrymple is one of the foremost writers and historians of India and the Middle East. His books include From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East; Nine Lives: in Search of the Sacred in Modern India; The Last Mughal; White Mughals; and Return of a King: The Battle of Afghanistan. In addition to his writing, Dalrymple is also a talented photographer, and we worked with him on a project with the Tasveer Gallery and the book designer, Moksha Carambiah, to edit and produce the publication of his photographs, The Historian’s Eye, for HarperCollins.
Working for and supported by the Japan Foundation, New Delhi, and Tasveer Arts, we produced a survey exhibition and print publication aimed towards celebrating and contextualising the work of six Japanese photographers at the cutting edge of the medium today. Taking the Japanese word for light—Hikari—as its starting point, the project was an exploration of how this is interpreted and used as an artistic tool by different cultures, and in doing so, asked broader questions about universalism and cultural identity in the arts. Our work included the conceptualisation of the exhibition and the project management, working closely with the co-curator Shio Kito, as well as various partner institutions and galleries.