Join us at TARQ for an engaging presentation by Ranjit Hoskote in context of our ongoing show World, But No Home curated by Kaiwan Mehta.
Culture does not evolve through the uncritical repetition of inherited formulae. It
evolves through the contributions of transgressive spirits who refuse to live by the
prevailing norms, rebellious questors who reject the platitudes of received wisdom.
These are the bridge-builders who operate between religious traditions, the border-
crossers who embrace the risk of cultural, ideological and philosophical difference. In
this presentation, a talk accompanied by readings, poet, translator and cultural
theorist Ranjit Hoskote will reflect on some of these “disturbers of the peace”, as he
calls them – these “griots, qalandars, avdhoots and mātrikas” who have shaken and
shaped our understanding of the cosmos and society, and the roles that we are
called upon to play within each of these frames. Among Hoskote’s dramatis
personae will be Lal Ded, Kabir, Meerabai, Bulleh Shah, Mir Taqi Mir, and Agha
Shahid Ali.
About Ranjit Hoskote
Ranjit Hoskote is a poet, cultural theorist, translator, and independent curator. His
collections of poetry include Central Time (Penguin, 2014), Jonahwhale (Penguin,
2018; in the UK, by Arc, as The Atlas of Lost Beliefs, 2020, which received a
prestigious Poetry Book Society Recommendation), Hunchprose (Penguin, 2021),
and Icelight (Wesleyan University Press & Penguin, 2023). He is the author of the
acclaimed translation of a 14 th -century Kashmiri woman mystic’s work, I, Lalla: The
Poems of Lal Ded (Penguin Classics, 2011) and, more recently, of a translation of
the great 18 th -century Urdu poet, Mir Taqi Mir, The Homeland’s an Ocean (Penguin
Classics, 2024). His essays on the art of Gieve Patel have been published as To
Break and To Branch (Seagull, 2024).
Hoskote has been active as an independent curator, working both in India and
internationally, since 1993. He curated India’s first-ever national pavilion at the
Venice Biennale (Everyone Agrees: It’s About to Explode, 2011). He co-curated the
7 th Gwangju Biennale with Okwui Enwezor and Hyunjin Kim (2008), and was a
contributor to the Former West cycle of BAK/ basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht.
Hoskote was a member of the curatorial-artistic core group for Acts of Voicing
(Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, 2012-2013). He was co-convenor, with
Maria Hlavajova, Boris Groys and Kathrin Rhomberg, of the exhibition-conference
platform Former West Congress: Documents, Constellations, Prospects (Haus der
Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2013).
Hoskote is a member of the founding international advisory board of the Bergen
Assembly, Norway, and has served on the advisory boards of the Haus der Kulturen
der Welt (HKW), Berlin, and the Nanyang Technological University’s Centre for
Contemporary Art (NTU-CCA), Singapore. He was a member of the jury for the
Venice Biennale (2015). In 2023, Hoskote was appointed as a member of the
Editorial Board of the Murty Classical Library of India, published by Harvard
University Press. Hoskote has been honoured with the Sahitya Akademi Golden
Jubilee Award, the Sahitya Akademi Translation Prize, the S H Raza Award for
Literature, and the 7 th JLF-Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia Award for Poetry.