Instagram story viewer> @swagato.ch> Posts

Swagato Chakravorty

@swagato.ch

2.5K

followers

6149

following

Associate Curator @henryartgallery • PhDing @yale
Transnational modernisms, contemporary art, roots/routes/materialities, the global South.
👀 my own.

POSTS STORIES REELS

What is it to consider questions of artmaking and technology “from below”—centering those whose histories, lives, and potential futures have been most impacted? What happens when artists confront Big Tech with historical materialism—attending to the materials, resources, and human labor that were and continue to be extracted and exploited? Are there liberatory possibilities born of technology and human creativity in the face of nation-state and corporate forms of repression?

Opening @henryartgallery in February 2027, Invention into Existence features nearly 20 artists and includes new commissions. It highlights emerging and mid-career artists, many making their PNW debut. The show unfolds across three interconnected clusters: systems of knowledge; raced, gendered, and sexed bodies as technological assemblages; and resource extractivism. Centering North America-based yet globally-informed critical perspectives, Invention into Existence invites us to consider the American technoscape through more expansive frameworks. More info @ link in bio.

🙌🏾❤️🙌🏾 the many artists with whom I have had the pleasure of being in dialogue across East and West coasts for years, and who have trusted the process: @morehshin @a_____rtist @stephanie.dinkins Jes Fan, Matthew Angelo Harrison, Tishan Hsu, @mayajeffereis @kitekitekitekitekite @amormunozm @rashaadnewsome @berenice.olmedo @mimionuoha Sondra Perry, @sarah_rosalena Bogosi Sekhukhuni, @ssyjuco and Paul Vanouse.

🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾 @warholfoundation and Friday Foundation for vital support. 💕💕💕 @ngbozicnik and @georgiaerger for many generative exchanges in Seattle, and to many colleagues @henryartgallery and elsewhere (among others @tinariversryan @ohashuhlee @juanomar.r ). 🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾 @andrewkrepsgallery @lodosgallery @cclarkgallery @ryanleegallery @electronicartsintermix @hoffman.donahue @l_a_b_o_r @commonwealthandcouncil @jessicasilvermangallery + private lenders. Sincere apologies for Insta grid cropping!

Can’t wait to share this with you next year as the Henry turns 100. Publication? Yes. Programs? Yes. Lots more to come. by @swagato.ch

In July, I opened “Every Picture Somewhat of an Experiment”: Helen Frankenthaler Prints @henryartgallery (on view through April 25, 2027). Highlighting for the first time a transformative recent gift of prints and proofs courtesy @helenfrankenthalerfoundation Prints Initiative, the exhibition spans four decades of Frankenthaler’s wide-ranging exploration of printmaking through various techniques and technologies as well as her collaborations with 5 different workshops. Her sustained dialogue bridging painting and print pushed both in new directions.

Complementing these experiments are two works (on loan) by @analiasabanstudio. Her “Printed Paint” series, poised somewhere between painting and print while refusing to be contained by the conventions of either, shares with Frankenthaler a commitment to abstraction, materiality, and rethinking what we think we know about painting, printmaking, or both.

I hope you’ll spend time with these brilliant (in every sense) works! Deepest thanks to @helenfrankenthalerfoundation @tanyabonakdargallery and many colleagues @henryartgallery. @everythingtimestudio these photos are 🤩 by @swagato.ch

CoCA’s statement of purpose, dated October 26th, 1980, declared “We advocate the formation of a contemporary art center in Seattle. The principal goal of the center is to be a catalyst and a forum for the advancement and understanding of contemporary art. The center will energetically participate in both current and evolving issues in contemporary art. This will be done through exhibitions, residencies, special projects, publications, and public discussions. The scope of the center will be regional, national, and international. The center does not intend to acquire a permanent collection, choosing instead to stimulate and respond to new activity.” While CoCA does not keep a permanent collection, we do keep an archive. As we look to our 46th anniversary since declaring our purpose, Center on Contemporary Art invites you to engage with its extensive history and activate the archives.

We invite you to donate to CoCA’s archives and well-being:

visit https://www.cocaseattle.org/join-give by @swagato.ch

For my first outing @henryartgallery, I wanted to return to the basics in a moment when it can sometimes seem difficult to articulate why art matters. Figure/ground relationships. Abstraction. Can the sum be greater than its parts?

I’m grateful for the brilliance of @sarahelizabethlewis1 ‘s insights around “groundwork”—how to think historically, in the present, about artists standing their ground, insisting on agency and creative freedoms in the face of systems that would prefer acquiescence.

Highlighting recent acquisitions, long-unseen works, and an @artswa loan, “Figure/Ground: New Criteria” presents works by @chakaiabooker @glennligon @jcjstudio @ssyjuco Denzil Hurley and Richard Serra that, obliquely or more directly, and by innovative use of textures and materiality, think through the literal and conceptual ground of art—and life.

You have until April 26 to come through! @henryartgallery is free and open to all.

All install photos courtesy @vander_what 🙏🏾
🙌🏾🙏🏾🙌🏾 @ngbozicnik and many colleagues at the Henry.

Detail images of Glenn Ligon, “Untitled” (Four Etchings)” (1992) ©️ Glenn Ligon, courtesy the artist, @hauserwirth and @thomasdanegallery by @swagato.ch

Major congratulations to @aleesapalexander @kat.cua @cantorarts and the Asian American Art Initiative for organizing “Spirit House,” and to my fabulous colleagues @ngbozicnik @_emdash_ for the terrific PNW presentation @henryartgallery — at this time the only other US venue for this vital exhibition.

At a time when histories and narratives of ancestry, self-determination, and diaspora are being contested across the world, “Spirit House” convenes 33 contemporary artists of the Asian diaspora working across generations, across mediums and media, as they explore ghosts and specters (personal and collective), hauntings (individual and national), and the question of making, unmaking, and remaking the worlds we inhabit.

Come spend time with the nearly 50 works in this show. The Henry is free for all and Spirit House runs through Jan. 11, 2026. by @swagato.ch

Could not have asked for a better arrival @henryartgallery. I am grateful to @ngbozicnik and all at the Henry, and to @georgiaerger @brujapapi @jjjcccdiaz among others for welcoming me to Seattle in what has been an art-filled first week!

The hype about Seattle summer weather and landscape is real. We’re fortunate to have access to absurdly good food wherever one looks. And the PNW is showcasing seriously ambitious contemporary art at its great institutions and elsewhere. There are many exciting things coming up at the Henry—which recently became free for all! I hope to see you there soon. 🙏🏾 by @swagato.ch

Wrote about one of the best shows of the year so far, Video After Video: The Critical Media of CAMP. Organized by @stuartcomer and @rattanamol @themuseumofmodernart, it presents 3 major works by CAMP @bombaytiltsdown spanning 20 years of their hacktivist, shape-shifting, collaborative practice. Deeply embedded within urban contexts and moving-image environments from handheld video to CCTV to cable networks, CAMP engages video as a set of open-ended questions—urging us to rethink everyday infrastructures that define social, economic, political hierarchies and inequities.

The largest work in the show, “Bombay Tilts Down” (2022) is an electrifying portrait of one of the world’s great cities as it—like many other cities across South, Southeast, and East Asia—hurtles through neoliberal development hell while trying to hold on to histories of solidarity and resistance forged in Third World internationalist contexts.

(Also, it’s just delightful to hear AR Rahman blasting through MoMA galleries)

Grateful to @devikagirgayi and all @filmcommentmagazine for inviting me to share my thoughts. Exhibition runs through July 20, go see it ASAP! Link in bio.

@experimenterkol by @swagato.ch

Posted @withregram • @henryartgallery We’re thrilled to welcome two new curators to the Henry! 🎉 Please join us in celebrating the arrival of Swagato Chakravorty as Associate Curator and Randi Evans as Associate Curator of Programs this July.

Swagato (he/him) is a curator and critic whose work spans modern and contemporary art and visual culture, with a focus on the Global South and diasporic contexts. Most recently, he was the Daniel W. Dietrich II Curatorial Fellow in Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where he co-curated “Isaac Julien: Lina Bo Bardi — A Marvellous Entanglement” and organized “Day With(out) Art 2022” in collaboration with Visual AIDS. He has also held roles at MoMA, the Jewish Museum, and the New Museum in New York, and is completing his PhD at Yale in History of Art and Film and Media Studies. Swagato’s socially engaged scholarship, and investment in historically underrepresented perspectives distinguish him as an exceptional addition to our team.

Randi (she/her) is an educator and scholar who comes to us from The Jule Museum at Auburn University, where she managed public programs and community partnerships. Her background includes work in correctional facilities, after-school programs, and centers for adults with disabilities. Randi holds a PhD in Performance Studies from UC Berkeley, as well as degrees from the University of Washington, and Cornish College of the Arts. She is also a published dance scholar and a recent participant in the Jekyll Island Management Institute for emerging museum leaders. A Seattle native, she brings a strong commitment to access, collaboration, and expanded forms of learning.

We’re excited for the vision, care, and creativity Swagato and Randi will bring to the Henry as we continue to build an artist-centered, community-connected curatorial and public engagement program.

Welcome, Swagato and Randi! 💚 by @swagato.ch

Grateful to @jinnykk @keegjs @jazz.ivett and all @cueart for reminding us why cultural spaces matter, especially in times of crisis and repression. I’m inspired by how CUE has supported, uplifted, and forged community around @tsohilbhatia ‘s brilliant exhibition. This Fire That Warms You is now extended through Dec. 14—go. Spend time with these works.

Thinking through Tsohil Bhatia’s wide-ranging, multidisciplinary, yet rigorous practice has been a challenge and a pleasure. I can’t wait to see what you do next, Tsohil! Thanks also to @alpeshkantipatel for their invaluable insights, and for being an amazing thought partner. by @swagato.ch

Many congratulations dear @tsohilbhatia @jinnykk and all at @cueart for making possible such an immersive, multi-sensory, moving show 🙌🏽🙏🏽💕 Thanks especially to Tsohil for inviting us to join in their precise, rigorous exploration of care-work, labor, and latent potentials.
Up through Oct. 19—go!

***

This Fire That Warms You is a solo exhibition by artist Tsohil Bhatia with mentorship from @puppiespuppiesjade Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo). The exhibition imagines the gallery as a kitchen, activating and recontextualizing its furnishings, ingredients, methods, and labor. Bhatia engages in transmodal ways of making that consider the everyday and the ephemeral. Their ongoing studio and kitchen practices converge, revealing excerpts and observations of their daily life through sculpture and installation-based works.

This Fire That Warms You sets a stage for something that is yet to happen—or perhaps that has already taken place. Bhatia constructs a scenography that serves as a backdrop to study and reperform domestic and emotional labor. Repurposed kitchenware hangs from the ceiling; dried fruits and vegetables are self-actualized through decay; pressure cookers erupt with sound and steam; surfaces bear evidence of cuts, spills, and burns. Remnants of labor hint at the presence of a body and its ghost. In its absence, however, time becomes a central character—measured in odor, hissing, running water, and discoloration. Abstracted rituals unfold without instruction, enabling a form of mourning that both facilitates memory and anticipates loss.

More: https://cueartfoundation.org/this-fire-that-warms-you by @swagato.ch

The opening to Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility @guggenheim left me reeling in the best of ways. Brilliantly curated by Dr. Ashley James @ohashuhlee the show grabs you from the start and never lets up, every section at once speaking to others while ideas radiate outward, taking over the whole of the rotunda. 28 artists, 100+ works. I don’t think I’ve seen another exhibition make such compelling use of the museum’s spiral architecture.

Fittingly for a show so deeply invested in the aesthetics and politics of in/visibility, opacity, fugitivity, and sur/sous-veillance, most of the works resist being photographed for social media.

I’m just in awe of what this show pulls off, how it brings so many ideas, artists, and communities together. Huge, huge congratulations @ohashuhlee and Faith Hunter! 🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽

***

Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility presents works of art that feature partially obscured or hidden figures, thus positioning them at the “edge of visibility.” In this art context, the common phrase going dark is understood as a tactic whereby artists visually conceal the body to explore a key tension in contemporary society: the desire to be seen and the desire to be hidden from sight.
…
Occupying the Guggenheim Museum’s iconic rotunda, Going Dark presents more than 100 works by a group of 28 artists, the majority of whom are Black and more than half of whom are women. While most of the works date from the 1980s to the present, a selection of them were created in the 1960s and ’70s by three iconic artists—David Hammons, Faith Ringgold, and Charles White—suggesting that the development of Conceptual art during these decades launched new pathways of expression that laid the groundwork for contemporary artists tackling the “edge of visibility” today.

***

#goingdarkguggenheim by @swagato.ch