Iftikhar Dadi

John H. Burris Professor

Overview

Iftikhar Dadi teaches and researches modern and contemporary art from a global and transnational perspective, with emphasis on questions of methodology and intellectual history. His writings have focused on modernism and contemporary art in South and West Asia, as well as their diasporas. Another research interest examines the film, media, and popular cultures of South Asia, seeking to understand how emergent publics forge new avenues for civic participation.

Publications include Lahore Cinema: Between Realism and Fable (University of Washington Press, 2022), a pioneering scholarly examination of mid-century cinema from Lahore; and Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia (University of North Carolina Press, 2010), which has been widely reviewed in academic and art journals and received the Book Prize from the American Institute of Pakistan Studies. Informed by postcolonial theory and globalization studies, the work traces the emergence of modernism by selected artists from South Asia over the course of the twentieth century. His essays have appeared in numerous journals, edited volumes, and online platforms.

Edited publications include the books Lahore Biennale 01 Reader (Skira 2022); Anwar Jalal Shemza (Ridinghouse, 2015); the co-edited Lahore Biennale 02 Reader (Skira 2024) with Hoor Al Qasimi; Art and Architecture of Migration and Discrimination: Pakistan, Turkey and their European Diasporas (Routledge, 2023) with Esra Akcan; and the co-edited special issue of ARTMargins 13, no. 3 (2024) titled “On-Site in the City: Comparative Urban Aesthetics in Asia at the Turn of the 21st Century” with Nancy P. Lin. In addition, he has co-edited publications associated with exhibitions he has co-curated: Pop South Asia: Artistic Explorations in the Popular (2022); Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space (2012); and Unpacking Europe: Towards a Critical Reading (2001). Conferences co-organized include The Next Monsoon: Climate Change and Contemporary Cultural Production in South Asia, a three-day event at Cornell University in October 2023.

Co-curated exhibitions include Pop South Asia: Artistic Explorations in the Popular (Sharjah Art Foundation 2022 and Kiran Nadar Museum of Art 2023); Lines of Control on partitions and borders (Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell, 2012 and Nasher Museum at Duke University, 2013); Tarjama/Translation on the contemporary art of the Middle East and Central Asia (Queens Museum of Art, 2009 and Herbert F. Johnson Museum, 2010); and Unpacking Europe on the relation between Europe and the postcolonial world (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Rotterdam, 2001).

Dadi currently serves on the editorial and advisory boards of ARTMargins, South Asian Studies, Archives of Asian Art, and Bio-Scope: South Asian Screen Studies, and was a member of the editorial board of Art Journal (2007-11). He is an advisor to the Hong Kong-based research organization Asia Art Archive. He is a board member of Cornell’s Institute for Comparative Modernities (ICM), has served as Chair of Cornell’s Department of Art (2010-14), and Director of Cornell’s South Asia Program (2015-16 and 2018-2023). He has received grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Getty Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Iftikhar Dadi received his PhD in the history of art at Cornell University.

As an artist, Iftikhar Dadi works collaboratively with Elizabeth Dadi. Their work investigates questions of memory and borders in contemporary globalization, and the productive capacities of urban informalities across the Global South. Their practice draws on archaeology, cinema, and art historical references, and critically engages with site-specificity. Selected exhibitions and projects include at Museum Van Loon, Amsterdam (2024); Sharjah Biennial 15 (2023); Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland (2022); Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge University (2019-20); 13th Havana Biennial, Matanzas (2019); Lahore Biennale 01, Pakistan (2018); John Hartell Gallery, Cornell University (2018 & 2015); Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai (2018 & 2015); Office of Contemporary Art Norway, Oslo (2017); Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh (2016); Art Gallery of Windsor, Ontario (2013); Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan (2012); Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2010); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2010); Kunstnernes Hus-Oslo (2005); Moderna Museet-Stockholm (2005); Queens Museum of Art, New York (2005); Liverpool Biennial 03, Tate Liverpool (2002); EV+A 2002, Limerick, Ireland (2002); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2000); Third Asia-Pacific Triennial, Brisbane, Australia (1999); and 24th Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil (1998).

Publications

Books:

Authored:

(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2022).

(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010).

Edited:

Lahore Biennale 02 Reader (Milan: Skira 2024), co-edited with Hoor Al Qasimi.

13, no. 3 (October 2024) special issue, “On-Site in the City: Comparative Urban Aesthetics in Asia at the Turn of the 21st Century,” co-edited with Nancy P. Lin.

The Art and Architecture of Migration and Discrimination: Pakistan, Turkey and their European Diasporas (New York: Routledge, 2023), co-edited with Esra Akcan.

Lahore Biennale 01 Reader (Milan: Skira, 2022).

Pop South Asia: Artistic Explorations in the Popular (Sharjah: Sharjah Art Foundation, 2022), co-edited with Roobina Karode.

Anwar Jalal Shemza (London: Ridinghouse, 2015).

Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space (Ithaca: Herbert F Johnson Museum of Art, 2012), co-edited with Hammad Nasar.

Tarjama/Translation: Contemporary Art from the Middle East, Central Asia, and Their Diasporas (ArteEast, 2009), co-edited with Leeza Ahmady and Reem Fadda.

Unpacking Europe: Towards a Critical Reading (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, 2001), co-edited with Salah Hassan.

Selected recent essays:

“Art and the 1947 Partition of South Asia,” and “Pakistani Diaspora Artists in the UK,” in , eds. Esra Akcan and Iftikhar Dadi (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023).

“Lithographic Assemblages: The Urdu Art Book in the Age of Print,” in , ed. Sonal Khullar (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2023).

“Ganesh Haloi: Infinite Abstraction,” in , ed. Natasha Ginwala and Jesal Thacker (Ahmedabad: Mapin, 2023).

“Introduction: Lahore Is Lahore,” in Lahore Biennale 01 Reader, ed. Iftikhar Dadi, (Milan: Skira, 2022).

“Legacies and Futures: An Interview with Iftikhar Dadi,” in , ed. Partha Mitter, Parul Dave Mukherji, and Rakhee Balaram (London: Thames & Hudson, 2022).

“Between Neorealism and Humanism: Jago Hua Savera,” in , ed. Lotte Hoek and Sanjukta Sunderason (London: Bloomsbury, 2022).

“A Questionnaire on Global Methods,” 180 (Spring 2022): 16-19.

“Installation,” in 12, no. 1-2 (2021): 106-112.

“A Questionnaire on Decolonization,” 174, no. 3 (2020): 27-30.

“Citizenship and Art,” 16 (March 2019): 18–21.

“Affiliations of Postcolonial Art History,” 43, no. 2 (August 2020).

“Visual Culture and the Popular.” , January 14, 2020.

“Reflections on the Havana Biennial at Matanzas (2019),” 11, no. 3 (June 10, 2020): 74–81.

“Abstraction in the Arab World,” in , ed. Suheyla Takesh and Lynn Gumpert (New York: Grey Art Gallery, New York University, 2020), 50–59.

“Calligraphic Abstraction,” in , ed. Finbarr Barry Flood and Gülru Necipoğlu (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), 1292–1313.

“Lineages of Pakistan’s ‘Urdu’ Cinema: Mode, Mood and Genre in Zehr-E Ishq / Poison of Love (1958).” 57, no. 4 (December 2016): 480–87.

“Modernity and Its Vernacular Remainders in Pakistani Cinema,” in , ed. Ali Khan and Ali Nobil Ahmed (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2016), 77–100.

“Reflections on the Conception of Modern and Contemporary Islamic Art,” in Jameel Prize 4, ed. Tim Stanley and Salma Tuqan (Istanbul: Pera Müzesi, 2016), 70–78.

“Frayed Geographies and Fractured Selves: Shilpa Gupta’s Untitled (2014-15),” in (Delhi: Harper Collins, 2016), 70-75.

“The Aesthetics of the American Qur’an Project,” in (New York: Liveright, 2016), 429–34.

“The Middle East and South Asia: Aesthetic Mobilities,” in (Prestel, 2015), 81-88.

“Mapping Asia.” 13, no. 6 (2014): 82-89.

“Chughtai’s Revival of Mughal Cosmopolitanism,” , ed. Derryl MacLean and Sikeena Karmali (Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 127-155.

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Iftikhar Dadi

John H. Burris Professor

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