ROZEMIN KESHVANI

I am a maker. I make ideas into living forms by thinking through exhibition-making and writing.  My work harnesses art, poetry, voice and archive to become creative productive forces. I engage critically with art historical narratives to challenge accepted canons by activating archives and oral histories to re-frame our encounter with the past and reset our vision and imaginations for the future. My strategies aim to dislocate and disengage deeply-held narratives, catalysing truth to reveal itself through encounters that combine visual practices with performance, documentation, object-based research and voice. Together we decolonise archives, re-situate narratives and unashamedly disrupt the canon. 

I have recently completed a five year research project, producing an extensive volume on the so-called 'A' Course, a radical experiment in art education undertaken at St. Martin's School of Art beginning in 1969. The publication, The Locked Room (MIT Press, 2020) includes interviews, conversations, and writings from participants alongside never-before-published photographs and archival documentation. It presents more than thirty student projects, spanning four years of inventive instruction by its four tutors, Peter Atkins, Garth Evans, Peter Harvey, and Gareth Jones, as well as student-initiated games and actions—including an account of the infamous extracurricular “boxing match” organized by students.  The project was co-sponsored by the Henry Moore Institute and the Paul Mellon Foundation and the editorial board have combined to produce The Locked Room blog.

In 2019, I curated Dreams & Dystopias, an exhibition exploring contemporary post-colonial East Africa at the crossroads through the lenses of two powerful image makers. The photography of renowned international photojournalist Guillaume Bonn is (Madagascar, Kenya, France) captures post-colonial East Africa as a landscape perennially poised between two worlds. Bonn’s images depict place as archaeological sites shuttering an unreachable disappearing past, barely effable but through the echoes of its fragments and traces. The poignancy of a past to which one can never return; ‘le mal d’Afrique’ some have called it; yet one that remains ever-present in its decaying architectural  landscape. Grace Nditiru (Kenya, UK) creates 'hand-crafted' videos and experimental photography of elusive beauty, potent insight and depict a sensitive approach to institutional critique, post-colonial healing and social transformation. Co-sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society, the exhibition was layered with images and documentation that interrogated the colonial history of East Africa, including the transatlantic slave trade and the earliest British explorations to find the source of the Nile. Together with geo-political displays engaging viewers to consider the impact of climate change, migration and access to scarce resources, this exhibition invited critical engagement with the aspirations, expectations and failures that underpin our shared colonial history.

I have made work with Zamana Space, The Ismaili Centre, Flat Time House, Bartha Contemporary and Laure Genillard Gallery in London as well as the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany and the Trondheim kunstmuseum in Norway. 

I am curator of Better Books | Better Bookz: Art, Anarchy, Apostasy and the Avant-Garde (2012-2104) and author and co-editor of the exhibition research book published under the same name (Koenig Books, 2019). I have authored several exhibition catalogues and artist monographs. 

I am currently on break from exhibition-making in order to pursue PhD research in philosophy and aesthetics with Howard Caygill, applying aesthetic theory to interrogate synthetic biology and the inception of life. I completed my MPhil at CRMEP, Kingston University, with my dissertation, Genius, Judgement & Production: a critical interrogation of Kant’s concept of genius through the logic of hypotyposis. I am married to Keith with whom I have made two amazing children.