Program Schedule: 

10 am – Opening 


10.15 am – C S Lakshmi (Ambai) - The Synchronized Act: A Way of Understanding Writing and Reading 


11.15 am – Tea Break 


11.30 am – Rizio Yohannan Raj - Will She Ever Get There? A Reader's View from the Translator's Middleground 


12. 30 pm – Lunch 


1.30 pm – Pushpamala N – From Seeing to Reading – A Visual Artist’s Perspective 


2.30 pm – Tea Break 


3 pm – Panel Discussion – C S Lakshmi, Rizio Yohannan Raj, Pushpamala N.Moderator – Dr. Maya Dodd


About the speakers


1. C S Lakshmi - C. S. Lakshmi (Ambai) is a distinguished fiction writer in Tamil. Her works are characterized by her passionate espousal of the cause of women, humor, a lucid and profound style, and a touch of realism. She is the only Tamil writer to have been included in the Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature edited by Amit Chaudhuri. Most of her stories are about relationships and they contain brilliant observations about contemporary life. Exploration of space, silence, coming to terms with one's body or sexuality, and the importance of communication are some of the recurring themes in her works.


A Doctorate from Jawaharlal Nehru University in the 1970's, she is presently the Director of Sound & Picture Archives for Research on Women (SPARROW) in Mumbai. She is a recipient of Narayanaswamy Aiyar Prize for her fiction. Among her works are Sirakukal muriyum, Vittin mulaiyil oru camaiyalarai and The Face behind the mask : Women in Tamil literature. Many of her stories have been translated into English. 


2. Rizio Yohannan Raj - Rizio Yohannan Raj is a bilingual writer, translator and educationist. Her works include two collections of poetry in English (Eunuch, Naked by the Sabarmati and Other Guna Poems), and two novels in Malayalam (Avinasom, Yatrikom), the first of which is translated into English as A Tale of Things Timeless (HarperCollins 2012). She has translated major 20th century Malayalam writers into English, and introduced seminal works from other languages in Malayalam. Her academic works include a pioneering volume on Comparative Literature, Quest of a Discipline: New Academic Directions for Comparative Literature. She has also been a journalist, a books editor and a publisher. Her last assignment in publishing was at Katha, New Delhi, as Head of Publishing. She is the founder-director of a trust dedicated to the cause of education and life appreciation, Lila Foundation for Translocal Initiatives and presently works towards developing Lila as a cultural think-tank, action platform and a dynamic conservation space.


3. Pushpamala N - Pushpamala N has been called “the most entertaining artist-iconoclast of contemporary Indian art”. In her sharp and witty work as a photo- and video-performance artist, sculptor, writer, curator and provocateur, and in her collaborations with writers, theatre directors and filmmakers, she seeks to subvert the dominant cultural and intellectual discourse. She is known for her strongly feminist work and for her rejection of authenticity and embracing of multiple realities. As one of the pioneers of conceptual art in India and a leading figure in the feminist experiments in subject, material and language, her inventive work in sculpture, conceptual photography, video and performance have had a deep influence on art practice in India.


Starting off her career as a sculptor, Pushpamala began using photography and video in the mid -1990s, creating tableaux and photo-romances in which she casts herself in various roles. Interested in history and the idea of cultural memory, she cites a wide range of references in her series of masquerades where she simultaneously inhabits and questions familiar frames from art history, photography, film, theatre and popular culture, thereby placing herself as the artist at the centre of social and political inquiry.