Srinivas Aditya Mopidevi
Conference Report. December 2025
Am I a body? Am I a building? I often found myself asking this question amid the enormous and fascinating diversity of people that gathered for the CIMAM2025 conference in Turin. All of us, in a knowing or unknowing way, started to represent regions, cultures, ideas, and people in the hope of finding overlaps and appreciating differences. What stood out is the openness of holding space for each other, to listen, reflect, discuss, and deliberate on what possible understanding of institutions we can put forward. I appreciated that the conference began with a caution by Françoise Vergès, who reminded us quite pertinently that museums have no specific protections from the forces of the global conflict and that there is an urgent need to outline the political economy of new museums in the making.
My most rewarding takeaway from the conference is the first breakout discussion I participated in, led by Victoria Noorthoorn and me. The discussion centered on the museum and its unique civic role in society, with each of us responding from our individual perspectives. The discussion brought forth instances from Denmark, Holland, India, Germany, Argentina, the U.K., and Costa Rica, among others. Our group emphasized a lot on museums that are embedded in communities and included them as equal stakeholders in the decision-making process. The instances, such as the Arken Museum, were humbling to learn about as they included members of the local community on the Museum board. Towards the end, we also asked the question of why community? And whether the institutional ideas of a community always refer to marginalized people. We also discussed instances such as the Kochi Biennale as examples where it is completely embedded in the local ecosystem of Kochi. The culmination of the discussion was about the aspect of ethics in relation to community engagement by the institutions of art.
Another provocative takeaway from the conference was Mariana’s keynote address, which spoke about the feudal underpinnings of the art world systems with an emphasis on the public value of arts and culture. Her call to situate art at the centre of the value chain was radical and offered a new way of imagining the ecosystem.
I also learnt a lot from the CIMAM Travel Grantee cohort, whose dynamic and unique experiences kept expanding the conversations every time we sat around a table, shared a bus ride, and walked together on breaks. As someone who is very much interested in the question of ethics in artistic, curatorial, and institutional practice, I look forward to future CIMAM editions where we can collectively reflect on the ethics within the space of modern and contemporary art.
Biography
Srinivas Aditya Mopidevi is a writer and curator based in New Delhi. He is currently the Curator, Visual Arts, at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, India. In his multifaceted career spanning fifteen years, he has been involved in research and curatorial projects with the Park Avenue Armory and Asia Society in New York. He has held positions with the Devi Art Foundation, Raqs Media Collective, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Terrain.art, Nature Morte, and Pollinator.io, New Delhi.
Mopidevi is a graduate of the M.S. University of Baroda, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard, NY. He is also a visiting professor at the Department of Visual Arts, Ashoka University, India, and the co-curator of Climate Recipes, an itinerant research project that documents intergenerational wisdom on the land and environment. Alongside Thukral and Tagra, he co-initiated Sustaina India, an art, science, and climate action platform, where he now serves as an advisor.
Mopidevi's current research and curatorial work explore the relationship between contemporary art, materiality, technology, and ecology. As a curator at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, he is committed to creating accessible exhibitions and developing innovative public engagement frameworks that effectively connect with diverse demographics in India and beyond.
Srinivas Aditya Mopidevi, Curator, Visual Arts, at Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi, India, has been awarded by Chitra Talwar.