Department: Tate Britain Curatorial
Host: Alison Smith, Lead Curator, 19th Century British Art
For the exhibition Artist and Empire (2015–16), Ayesha undertook collection research on artworks, particularly with the themes of landscape, portraiture and photography from the colonial period.
Ayesha also wrote entries for the Exhibition Catalogue and, through participation in regular meetings with the Artist and Empire Curatorial team, contributed to the exhibition development process.
Ayesha presented at three institutions – Tate, University of Cambridge and Goldsmiths, University of London – her new research on representations of the tawa’if (courtesans) – in forms ranging from painting and photography to matchbox labels – in colonial Awadh and Delhi from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century.
Bibis, Begums and Baijis: A Visual Portrayal of Women in the Mughal Successor states of Awadh, Hyderabad and Meerut. Late 18th to Early 20th centuries.
Biography
Ayesha Matthan is in the History of Art and Visual Studies department at Cornell University. She has degrees in English Literature, Journalism and Visual Studies from St Stephen’s College, Delhi; Asian College of Journalism, Chennai, and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, respectively.
Ayesha has worked with The Hindu, The Alkazi Foundation for the Arts and India Foundation for the Arts. She teaches a course on cities and visual culture and also works in the Asian Art Department at the Herbert F Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University. Her PhD dissertation is tentatively titled ‘Looking for Mumbai/Bambai/Bombay: Photography, Identity, and the City, 1970s–1990s.’
More information:
Cornell University profile
Academia.edu research publishing profile