Exhibiting Your Photography
Curator-Artist Collaborations Now
JUNE 13, 2025
Universe, Tat Tvam Asi- The Universe is a Mirror, 2024 @Manjari Sharma
Date: June 13, 2025, from 6-7:30pm
Location: Picto New York, Brooklyn, New York
Cost: $10 suggestion admission; free to registrants of June 13-14 Workshop, Pitching & Funding Your Project
Panel Overview
Amber Terranova and Holly Stuart Hughes will host a public panel discussion on collaborations between curators and lens-based artists to bring exhibitions to life.
Panelists John Fields, Director of the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts (AEIVA) at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and lens-based artist Manjari Sharma, will discuss their collaboration—on fundraising, public programming and planning—that lead to a commission of new work by Sharma and an acclaimed exhibition. Curator and art advisor Sadaf Padder will offer advice on building community-rooted exhibitions and programming, drawing on her work uplifting BIPOC women artists.
This promises to be a lively event for photographers eager to understand new curatorial initiatives, how institutions plan and fund photo exhibitions, and how photographers can engage new audiences. This talk complements the workshop "Pitching and Funding Your Project", to be held at Picto NY June 13-14.
Speakers Bios
© Jared Ragland and Cary Norton
John Fields is the inaugural Lydia Cheney and Jim Sokol Endowed Director for The Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Fields is a visual artist, filmmaker, musician, writer, public speaker, and university educator with over 20 years’ experience teaching visual art at the university level and working in various museum, gallery, and university roles. He has curated or co-curated 80+ exhibitions throughout his career, many of which have been featured in national and regional media outlets such as The New York Times, The Nation, Garden and Gun, PBS, Hyperallergic, Juxtapoz, among others.
As a visual artist, Fields has exhibited nationally and internationally with a particular focus on the southeastern United States. His work draws from pop culture and art history to address contemporary issues of personal identity, spirituality, mental health, sexuality, politics, and
culture. His work has been nominated for a Catherine Doctorow Prize for Contemporary
Painting and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award.
© Bill Gaines
Manjari Sharma (b. 1979, Mumbai, IN) is an internationally recognized Indian-American artist in LA who examines ritual, identity, memory, and mythology through worldbuilding. Her projects explore the nature and potential of rituals and their transformative impact on the inner landscape of the human mind through photography, sound, motion, projection, and sculpture. Manjari's project 'Darshan' (Published by Nazraeli Press) has garnered her wide critical acclaim and has been written about in publications such as The New York Times, Vice Magazine, CNN, LA Times, The Huffington Post, and NPR, to name a few. Her projects have been published and exhibited in galleries, museums, and festivals worldwide. Manjari is a proud recipient of the prestigious Pollock Krasner Foundation grant (2024), and her works are in the permanent collection of The MET, MFA, Houston, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Carlos Museum, and Birmingham Museum of Art, amongst various private collections.
© Diane Wah
Sadaf Padder is Brooklyn-based independent curator who has curated across the country, from Philadelphia to Los Angeles to Martha’s Vineyard, focusing on themes of climate change and neo-mythology to weave connections between various communities. Padder is uniquely informed by her background as a public school educator and administrator. Her curatorial work has earned mentions in LA Weekly, Hyperallergic, and Art News and resulted in acquisitions of BIPOC women artists by the Baltimore Museum of Art, Northwestern University, the Nion McEvoy Foundation and RISD Museum. Padder has contributed writing to Visual Aids, ARTSY, Up Mag, and HyperAllergic. She is a Create Change alumna with the Laundromat Project, a featured curator with ARTSY as well as a 2022-23 Emily J. Hall Tremaine Fellow via Hyperallergic. She is also a board member of the Vera List Center, 12 Gates Arts and Grown in Haiti.