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The “Beautiful Diaspora / You Are Not the Lesser Part” is a new exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP) in Chicago, curated by Senior Landecker Fellow and MoCP Associate Curator Asha Iman Veal.
As part of MoCP’s program, Asha Iman took part in a virtual public conversation with global artist Sunil Gupta, one of Beautiful Diaspora’s exhibiting artists.
Gupta’s selections in the exhibition include several projects from his decades-long portfolio. Gupta has photographed gay and queer communities in Montreal, New York, Delhi, and London—cities where he’s lived during critical points in the social history of the 1970s to the 2000s. Gupta himself migrated to North America in the late 1960s, and thereafter began to informally assemble the photography of his project “Friends & Lovers” gathering memories of his queer and artistic communities in Montreal (1970s). Gupta remains active as both an artist and scholar, recently completing a PhD dissertation titled “Queer Migrations,” a theme that befits his own life.
“It was an honor to sit down with Sunil for a virtual conversation between Chicago and Rome,” Asha Iman has shared.
The recording of their discussion is available below:
Asha Iman is one of thirty 2020-2021 Landecker Democracy Fellows. This fellowship, a collaboration between the Alfred Landecker Foundation and Humanity in Action, was created to strengthen a new generation of leaders whose approaches to political and social challenges can become catalysts for democratic placemaking and community building. Read more about the fellowship here.