BIO-DATA
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.
She 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.