Uthra Rajgopal in conversation with Rupi Dhillon

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A talk between Multidisciplinary Artist Rupi Dhillon and Independent Textiles Curator Uthra Rajgopal.

About this Event

Uthra and Rupi in conversation - Rupi is currently Artist in Residence in Asylum Gallery’s window space “The Quarter”. We invite Uthra and Rupi to share an open dialogue on the residency so far, all things textile and British Asian feminisms.

Uthra Rajgopal is an Independent Curator, formerly the Assistant Curator of Textiles and Wallpaper at the Whitworth. After graduating from the University of York in BA (Hons) History of Art, receiving a First Class with Distinction and winning the History of Art Prize and an MA in History of Art (Fashion, Body and Space) from the Courtauld Institute of Art, Uthra has worked with a number of museum dress and textile collections, commercial archives and exhibitions. Uthra has developed a specialist interest in South Asian textiles, having carried out fieldwork in Tamil Nadu with handloom weavers and various museum collections and has been a contributing author to ‘Textile History’ and 'Authenticity and Replication: The ‘Real Thing’ in Art History and Conservation' and is a former lecturer at Manchester School of Art. During her post at the Whitworth, Uthra worked on the South Asian textile collection, working alongside Dr Maria Balshaw and Diana Campbell Betancourt on the Raqib Shaw exhibition and curating the textile exhibition, Beyond Borders, which marked the 70th anniversary of India’s Independence and the Partition. Most recently, Uthra was the lead curator on an Arts and Humanities Research Council exhibition in conjunction with the University of Manchester, titled 'Beyond Faith: Muslim Women Artists Today'. In 2019 Uthra received the prestigious Art Fund New Collecting Award, mentored by Dr Sona Datta, to build a new collection for the Whitworth of South Asian textile artworks made by South Asian female artists from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh and from the diaspora in England.

Rupi Dhillon is a British, Indian, (British Asian, Punjabi, and all things in between and beyond) multidisciplinary artist based between Birmingham and The Black Country, UK.

Rupi explores the relationships and connections we have with one another as well as how we formulate a sense of self. Through her arts practice she investigates how multiplicity in culture is conducive to the concept of belonging and space. She is interested in facilitating discourse around race, gender and social class and the performability of these social structures. Using playful techniques, her current work reimagines cultural experience through gestalt expression, participatory performance, shared practices, gifting and attachments in found objects.

She has both exhibited and completed residencies in the Midlands and has also been the recipient of the prestigious Gertrude Aston Bowater Bequest as well as the Inaugural AIS Award 2020 and Tate Liverpool Artists Award 2020. Rupi has both a BA Hons and MA in Fine Art. Rupi currently works with contemporary art gallery Ikon in Birmingham as a Research Assistant for Ikon in the 1990s with Keith Piper funded by the Paul Mellon Centre. This year she will be working with Coventry Biennial and more recently has had work acquired for New Art Gallery Walsall’s Twenty Twenty Collection.

Rupi’s work although not seemingly obvious is informed by cultural trauma and experiences of being a British Asian woman, exploring personal and political narratives through a multiplicitous and playful practice. She is interested in establishing further research into Cultural Dysphoria as a Philosophy.