Ashish Avikunthak

Most recently named Future Greats 2014 by Art Review, Ashish Avikunthak has been making films for the past 20 years. In its citation Art Review succinctly describes his films: "In an artworld where an increasing number of critics are arguing that much globalised art takes the form of hollowed-out visual Esperanto, Avikunthak's works insist on an Indian epistemology while utilising a rigorously formal visual language that is clearly aware of Western avant-garde practices such as those of Andrei Tarkovsky and Samuel Beckett. These are self-consciously difficult works that are filmed in a self-consciously beautiful way". His films have been shown worldwide in film festivals, galleries and museums. Notable screenings were at the Tate Modern, London, Centre George Pompidou, Paris, Taipei Biennial 2012, Shanghai Biennial 2014, Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, along with London, Locarno, Rotterdam, and Berlin film festivals among other locations. He has had retrospective of his works at Rice University (2014), Signs Festival, Trivandrum (2013), Festival International Signes de Nuit, Paris (2012), Yale University (2008), and National Centre for Performing Arts, Mumbai (2008) and Les Inattendus, Lyon (2006). In 2011 he was short listed for the Skoda Prize for Indian Contemporary Art. He has a PhD in Cultural and Social Anthropology from Stanford University and has earlier taught at Yale University. He is now an Assistant Professor in Film/Media at Harrington School of Communication, University of Rhode Island.