The exhibition emerged through a collaborative pedagogical process, as the culmination of a semester-long seminar, conducted during the spring of 2019, aimed at workshopping curatorial practices at the master’s and doctoral level. The course was taught by Professor Tamara Sears and was designed to fulfill both a general elective requirement for the graduate programs in Art History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick NJ and a specific practicum requirement for the Rutgers curatorial studies program. 

The exhibition evolved as five doctoral students and Professor Sears met weekly in the Gaurs’ gallery space. Students engaged the collection hands-on, looking at each work and each artist individually as situated within both a post-colonial present and a longer history of aesthetic practice in the Indian subcontinent. They thought through the various ways in which the works could also be connected, in terms of both creative practice and broader social, cultural, or political thematic to curate this exhibition. 

This exhibition was subsequently expanded and travelled to Grinnell College Museum of Art.