Preksha Kothari is Programme Coordinator at Shrine Empire Gallery in New Delhi, and also a graduate of the Curating Collections and Heritage master’s programme. In this blog post, she reflects on her current professional priorities, and how the discussions and texts she encountered on the MA Curating helped sharpen her aims for the sector.
Currently, I am working as the Programme Coordinator at Shrine Empire, one of the leading contemporary art galleries of India and their non-profit venture, the Prameya Art Foundation. Located in New Delhi, we are working towards critically expanding and engaging with emerging contemporary art practices through our programming.
Almost a year into this position, I work on multiple avenues, including working closely with curators and artists for exhibition set-up, creating content for social media, and coordinating the various grants and awards that the Foundation offers to artists and curators in South Asia. Working in the contemporary arts in India has given me a deep insight into research, the history of contemporary arts, and its usage politically by minoritised and marginalised communities to reclaim spaces denied to them.
As the Programme Coordinator, I constantly recall and utilize the various concepts and debates that I studied in my MA Curating Collections and Heritage. One specific notion that is ever present is to make the institutions as accessible as possible, which was introduced to me for the first time while studying the Museums and Collections in Context module. We recently went bilingual for all exhibition texts from our September exhibition onwards. We will also be getting an accessibility audit in 2025 to take further steps to open our space to a diverse variety of audience, because ultimately, art is meant for sharing.
My favourite part about working as a Programme Coordinator is conversing with the visitors and giving them walkthroughs of our exhibitions. Also, working directly with curators and artists has immensely helped me in figuring out my own research interests, the nuances of exhibition making, and how the South Asian context applies to this.
Prameya Art Foundation is a nomadic institution, a direct response to the lack of institutional spaces in the region. With an objective to expand and collaborate with alternative practices and an expansive approach to arts, the foundation engages with arts organisations across the South Asian region and globally to foster critical conversations surrounding the arts. At the foundation, I primarily coordinate the many grants and residency programmes we have for emerging creative practitioners, and undertake curatorial research and writing for projects. Studying the MA helped me put into practice critical thinking and writing, which we were always encouraged to pursue through modules like Critical Perspectives on Exhibitions.
My recent projects have been completing proposals for international art fairs, assisting in curatorial research for a video exhibition programme, and creating a new Instagram series called ArtFridayFeature, that focuses on our gallery artists and highlighting their artistic practice for a particular work they want featured.
Image caption: Installation view, Debris Collector, a solo exhibition by Anoli Perera, Shrine Empire