T. Venkanna will be in conversation with Curator Habda Rashid during the opening week of the artist's first institutional solo exhibition.
T. Venkanna persistently questions sexual imagination and its entanglements with societal norms, freedom and repression. For his exhibition at Studio Voltaire, Venkanna is creating an expansive new series of paintings that mark a significant evolution in both scale and form for the artist, with individual paintings reaching across multiple panels.
The artist’s compositions draw together histories of image-making across Western and South Asian visual traditions. Renaissance imagery, such as Correggio’s Leda and the Swan or Michelangelo’s David, features alongside references to the gilded manuscripts of the Mughal Empire, Indian miniature paintings and the compositions of temple reliefs.
With a shared interest in the art histories that converge in Venkanna’s new body of work, the artist and Rashid will discuss the development of the exhibition and the artist’s broader practice.
Lead Programme Supporter: Blanca & Sunil Hirani Charitable Trust. Programme Supporter: The Burger Collection with additional support from the T. Venkanna Exhibition Circle, The Studio Voltaire Council and Art Fund's John Ruffer Curatorial Grant.
T. Venkanna (b.1980, Gajwel, India) lives and works in Hyderabad, India. Selected solo and group exhibitions include: The Human Theatre, Gallery Maskara, Mumbai (2025); Politically Charged, Aicon, New York (2024); Asia Now, Modesti Perdriolle Gallery, Brussels (2023); The Art of India, Clarinda Carnegie Art Museum, Iowa (2021); Looking for Peace, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai (2017); and Trajectories: 19th – 21st Century Printmaking from India and Pakistan, Sharjah Art Museum (2014).
Habda Rashid is the first Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, where she leads the development and diversification of its collections and recently curated the major exhibition Glenn Ligon: All Over The Place (2025). Rashid is also a Wolfson Fellow, an Advisor to the British School at Rome, a recipient of the SSA-IAF Curatorial Research Grant and was a juror for the 2025 Turner Prize. She has previously held curatorial positions at Create London and Whitechapel Gallery and as a writer, has published extensively on a range of artists.
This event will take place in the gallery and is seated. If you have any questions or need assistance with your visit, please feel welcome to contact us at +44 (0) 20 7622 1294 or info@studiovoltaire.org. Read Studio Voltaire's full access information here.
T. Venkanna, I Am Not Your Doll (Detail), 2024. Image courtesy of the artist and Gallery Maskara, Mumbai.
