• 2004-05 : Attended M.A course as an ‘Observer’ (mid-career scholarship) at the Department of Curating Contemporary Arts, Royal College of Arts, London, UK (on a Charles Wallace Trust of India Scholarship)

• 1990-92 : M.F.A in Art History, Dept of Art History, Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan, Viswabharati University, West Bengal, India.

• 1985-90 : B.F.A in Painting, College of Fine Arts, Bangalore University.

1. Current Teaching Position: (since 2019 till date) : Faculty, Host Dean (since 2023) of Contemporary Arts Practice (CAP) UGPP & PG Programme, Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design & Technology (SMI), Govindapura, Yelahanka, Bangalore-560 064
2. 2005 – 2019 (and 1992): Department of Art History (both UG and PG courses), College of Fine Arts, Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, Kumara Krupa Road, Bangalore, affiliated to Bangalore Univeristy. (taught Art History Western and Asian art, classical, modern and contemporary art, Criticism, Philosophy & Art Theories)
3. 2017-18: Editor, ‘Kala Vaarthe’ quarterly, Karnataka Lalitkala Academy publication, Kannada Bhavana, Ed: Prof. M.J. Kamalakshi.
4. 2006 onwards (freelance): Translating (English to Kannada) publications for National Gallery of Modern Art.
5. 2001 onwards: Contributing Co-Editor, ‘Art and Deal’ (Ed: Siddharth Tagore), Art Konsult Gallery, New Delhi. https://artanddeal.com/
6. 1992 onwards (freelance): Weekly Columnist and freelance Illustrator in various periodicals like Indian Express, Times of India, Kannada Express and Prajavani.
7. 1995 – 2005 : Department of Architecture, Bangalore Institute of Technology, affiliated to VTU (Vishweshwaraiah Technical University), Bangalore.
8. 1994 – 95 : Production Editor, MacMillan Publishers, Bangalore.

My area of interest/research includes visual arts, visual culture, static and mobile imagery, the art historiography around visual politics, the practical and ethical role of art being applied as a tool for effective teaching; and the potential inherent in practice based research through graphic novel as a means to archive, analyse and interpret the world around, like literary texts has been doing as a tradition.
Till now my interest has been put to the practice of both discipline-specific and interdisciplinary nature: art journalism, used to write about white cube culture, along with catalogue writing in appreciation of the exhibits, all of these used as primary source tools to experiment, explore and construe various teaching methodology for the contemporary context. Herein my interest is not to let art to remain as an isolated, independent privileged form but becomes an inevitable part and parcel of the larger context, addressing immediate issues around it like Anthropocene, the challenges posed by AI etc.,
My area of interest is also in developing a vocabulary of artistic terminologies in Kannada (and similarly encouraging such regional vocabularies in Indian and non-English context) for artistic terms and democratising it further. Through teaching and writing (about art, film and literary writings), I am involved in the formation of the modern and contemporary Indian art history, by being an active participant in the regional art history of Karnataka. Contesting the very divide between forms of making and interpretation seems to be the possible way out.

Curatorial Practice: An introduction into how curation is a way to build the students’ portfolio together. For the students who are good at producing individual works and projects in studios and workshops, they can learn to knit their works together comprehensively. This helps them to learn to construe a meaningful portfolio: how you put together works is what will be the evidence of creativity. I teach the difference between theoretic and practical curation, in reference to the history of curatorial practice. Art History & visual culture: I introduce art history as a way of seeing image and also to develop a ways of seeing, appreciating and analysing artistic works. At the same, the aspiring practitioners are encouraged to create art works in the background of the knowledge thus acquired. Also, the historiography of art history itself in the light of visual culture, wherein artworks interact with design and technology, is what I try to empower the students to grasp. Transdisciplinary Research (TDR): In this postgraduate programme, I have been teaching the making of graphic novel about Bengaluru. The idea is to narrate that story of this city which is untold. This is so because the graphic novel media, as a combination of visual and word, will unearth the city’s subverted history, wherein this artistic media becomes a testimony, an archive and an pedagogic tool. Both the form and the subject being new, together they define the city in a subaltern mode of visual kind. Gradually this TDR, over the course of successive studios, has focused upon telling the stories of the fading farming culture and the birth of organic farming in this IT city.

1. Transdisciplinary Research (PG Studio): A cost-effective mural in charcoal media, about the fading farming culture of Bangalore, at 5th floor, Rizak of SMI.
2. Transdisciplinary Research (PG Studio): A cost-effective mural in charcoal media, about the fading farming culture of Bangalore, by students Ramona Dias, Vani Parmar, Utshree Pandey & Spoorthi Rani.
3. Ragini Mundra’s research based graphic novel project in ink, about the street habits of Bengaluru.
4. Ragini’s TDR (Transdisciplinary Research) was an attempt to prove that ‘the way it is drawn is what is historically drawn, out of this city’.
5. A colour drawing by Anilkumar in ball point pens, in order to demonstrate the notion of spontaneity and a claim for the line’s autonomy.
6. Portrait photo: H.A. Anil Kumar (Mahesh Bhat sir, you have taken my photo, kindly use your photo as much as possible).

My Professional practice involves making art both theoretically and practically, with an intent to contest the difference inherent. It also involves curating such pedagogic explorations through subjecting the resultant teaching and learning into exhibition culture, by exhibiting my artworks and publishing my writings. I also create and circulate graphic novels of both fiction and non-fiction variety, thus minimising the classic divide between the fiction and non-fiction.
This is also a space wherein the hierarchy between gallery-public spaces are appropriated in my works. The display is deliberated to occur between the white cube and graphic melas like the Indie comix festival. In other words, the resultant outcome of the theory-practice in teaching, in the form of artworks as well as art writing (both fiction and non-fiction) are displayed in contrasting spaces. This means that contesting the classic categories of artistic expressions is the essence of my practice between teaching, making, exhibiting, curating and circulating images.
Also, sanctifying the possibility of social mediatic opportunity as a space for artistic communication is another of my creative practice. Graphic novel, social media and mural are the media that I engage to conduct practice based research about the urban in general and Bengaluru in particular. The untold stories/histories about the city, not told because of the politics of the written/publication industry and the agencies that control them (for instance, farming of the city is not archived or documented as much as gardening is) – is my area and form of theory and practice.