Wednesday, 18 March 2026
6:00 - 7:00pm
Art Gallery of NSW
Centenary Auditorium, Naala Nura Building

A lecture by our 2026 Sydney Asian Series Scholar in Residence on the sensory infrastructures of collage in a religious souvenir from Nathdwara, and a work by modernist Bhupen Khakhar. Co-presented with VisAsia at the Art Gallery of NSW.

Kajri Jain (PhD University of Sydney) is Professor of Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Toronto. Her work sits at the interface between art, religion, politics, caste, and vernacular business cultures in modern and contemporary India. Her publications include Gods in the Bazaar: The Economies of Indian Calendar Art, on popular prints (Duke University Press, 2007), and Gods in the Time of Democracy, on the emergence of monumental statues alongside economic liberalisation (Duke University Press, 2021). She also writes on contemporary art and on the discipline of art history, including in The Routledge Companion to Decolonizing Art History (2023) and How Secular Is Art? On The Politics of Art, History, and Religion in South Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2023).

Tuesday, 24 March 2026
6:00 - 7:15pm
Chau Chak Wing Museum
The University of Sydney

A conversation between artist Kirtika Kain and art historian Kajri Jain on the occasion of Unkept, Kirtika's new exhibition at the University of Sydney's Chau Chak Wing Museum. Co-presented with VisAsia at the Art Gallery of NSW and the Chau Chak Wing Museum.

Kirtika Kain is an artist and educator working on Dharug land. Combining elements of sculpture, experimental printmaking and painting. Kain’s practice draws from her Dalit lineage and investigates material histories, ancestral memory and the complexities of caste in the diaspora. Her materials are those of ritual and labour, including pigments, wax, gold and tar, challenging notions of sanctity, touch, stigma and purity while acknowledging the culture of Dalit people. She is a current recipient of the Parramatta Artist Studio Program, and has undertaken residencies at the British School at Rome (2019), the Cité Internationale des arts, Paris (2023), and Creative Australia’s Acme London Residency (2025).  

The Power Institute is a Foundation based at the University of Sydney dedicated to understanding the visual world, through art and visual culture. We support research, publish texts, and organise public programs.

The Power Institute would like to acknowledge and pay respect to the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the traditional owners of the land upon which the University of Sydney, and the Power Institute, is built. As we share our own knowledge, teaching, learning and research practices, may we also pay respect to the knowledge embedded forever within the Aboriginal Custodianship of Country.