Jun 05 2025 to Jun 05 2025 6:30 p.m.

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

Francis Newton Souza, one of the most provocative and unflinching voices in modern Indian art, challenged the conventions of both European and Indian art traditions. In her new book F.N. Souza: The Archetypal Artist, academic and art critic Janeita Singh offers a deeply interdisciplinary reading of Souza’s life and work, drawing on Jungian analysis, mythology, religion, and philosophy, to examine how Souza confronted the collective unconscious through his art.

In this session, she presents the key ideas from her book and then engages in a conversation with art historian Annapurna Garimella to explore how Souza’s expressionism defied colonial and religious authority, reclaimed the fragmented self, and questioned the ideological foundations of modernism. Together, they will reflect on the urgency of rethinking art history from decolonial and non-Western perspectives, and how Souza’s work, with its blend of eroticism, irreverence, and rage, continues to challenge dominant narratives of aesthetics, identity, and power.

The conversation will be followed by a Q&A with the audience.

Speakers

Janeita Singh
Author, Researcher & Literary-Art Critic
Author-researcher Janeita Singh is an academician turned literary-art critic. Her book FN Souza: The Archetypal Artist published in April 2024, is the culmination of a 12-year research project. Her interdisciplinary research explores the loss and recovery of the self in postcolonial, post-war and post-modernist times, with an emphasis on posthumanism. The book has been added to the reading collection at Tate Britain and the Getty Museum LA. It has been longlisted for the Oxford (Bookstore) Art Book Award.

She is the writer of the film, Ruptured Lines, based on FN Souza’s art practice.She has also lent her critical voice to the film, Father of Indian Modern Art. She curated talks on contemporary arts – Raza Dialogues, with Raza Foundation Delhi and Museum of Goa. She delivered presentations on the artist FN Souza at the Serendipity Art Festival, 2017-18. In 2019, she gave a talk on FN Souza at the exhibition, Souza in the 40s, at Sunaparanta Centre of the Arts. She hosted the weekly Live show Embodying Light and Shadow at Embodiment Conference in 2021. She was the Art Review Editor of Joao Roque Literary Journal JRLJ and was awarded JRLJ Non-fiction award, 2018. Janeita Singh’s column Bookedandhow in Navhind Times featured critical study of East-West classical texts, in dialogue with art history, photography, films, and music for five years.

Her writing based on the belief, ‘critic as an artist’ generates new perspectives of ways of seeing, and has been published in Art India, Take on Art magazine, Indian Literature, DAG-Iconic, and various anthologies. Her talks and writing on art at the Serendipity Arts festival, Art Mumbai, India International Centre IIC, Dhoomimal Gallery, Delhi Art Gallery, Pundole’s, Gallerie ISA, Espace Gallery, TIFA working studios, Fundação Oriente, Bangalore Society of Analytical Psychology, Monterey Friends of Carl Jung CA has been determining.

She lives in Goa India with her mother, husband and son on the banks of the river Zuari, meeting the sea under a multi-hued sky.

Annapurna Garimella
Designer & Art Historian
Dr. Annapurna Garimella is a designer and an art historian based in Bangalore. Having completed her B.A. from California State University, she went on to earn her M. Phil and Ph.D from Columbia University, New York. She heads Jackfruit, an organisation with a specialised portfolio of design, research and curatorial projects.

She is also founder of Art, Resources and Teaching Trust, a not-for-profit organisation that runs a public art library, conducts independent research projects and does teaching and advisement for college and university students and the general public. She was the former Research Editor and Advisory Board Member for Marg Publications and is currently on the board of the S N School of Art and Communication, University of Hyderabad. She is the author of the book, The Artful Life of R. Vijay published by Serindia Publications in December 2015.