Sharmistha Ray

Sharmistha Ray is a New York-based independent visual artist, writer, curator, activist, cultural producer and public speaker working in the field of contemporary art. She has exhibited her work globally in the U.S., Singapore and India, and prior to this she was the Managing Director of Bodhi Art, an international gallery for contemporary art based in Mumbai (India) with branches in New Delhi, Singapore, Berlin and New York. She managed more than 100+ exhibitions of contemporary artists at art fairs, galleries and museums around the world, initiated critical new partnerships, stimulated private/public art collecting, and oversaw the gallery’s curatorial, educational and publishing platforms. She is widely regarded for her pioneering role in building new structures that put contemporary art from South Asia on the global map.

Sharmistha’s reviews on contemporary art appear in Hyperallergic, Ocula and Artcritical. In 2018, she was a guest art critic on the December edition of REVIEW PANEL, a panel of established art critics in conversation about topical exhibitions, at the Brooklyn Public Library. In 2015, her iconic public art work made of steel, ON THE SEASHORE OF ENDLESS WORLDS at the Kala Ghoda Festival 2015, Mumbai, was commissioned by JSW. In 2014, she was selected by the Berklee College of Music to create an original art work to celebrate the Grammy and Academy Awards-winning musician, A.R. Rahman, for a tribute at Symphony Hall, Boston.

A TED Fellow and public speaker, Sharmistha is an advocate for LGBTQI+ causes and gender equality in the art world. She gave a TED Talk in Whistler in 2013 about the public and private crossroads of art, gender and sexuality and was on a panel at SXSW in Austin, Texas about gender biases against women entrepreneurs in 2019. In 2015, she was one of the faces of UNGENDER, a campaign by Elle in collaboration with FOCUS, a city-wide photography festival in Mumbai, on gender non-conformity and expression.

[Programming descriptions are generated by participants and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of SXSW.]