Bhavisha Panchia

Biography

Dr. Bhavisha Panchia is a curator and writer whose research and curatorial practice explore the social, cultural, and political significance of sound and music in contemporary art. Her work examines the relationship between auditory media, geopolitical formations, anti- and postcolonial discourses, and imperial histories, asking how critical acts of listening can reshape understandings of the past and imagine new futures.

She is the founder of Nothing to Commit Records, a label and publishing platform dedicated to expanding knowledge of contemporary art and sound practices within and across the Global South. Her writing has been published in books, academic journals, and exhibition catalogues, and she has held research and curatorial fellowships at the Bern Academy of the Arts and the Braunschweig University of the Arts.

Panchia holds a BA in Fine Arts and an MA in History of Art from the University of the Witwatersrand, an MA in Curatorial Practice from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, and a PhD in Art History from Rhodes University. Her doctoral research examined how contemporary African artists on the continent and in the diaspora use sound and listening as critical methodologies for engaging postcolonial histories and challenging colonial and imperial epistemologies.

Her curatorial projects have been presented internationally at institutions and platforms including Amos Rex (Helsinki), MOCA Tucson, Performa Biennial (New York), the Sharjah Art Foundation, and Manifesta 13 (Marseille). Selected exhibitions and programmes include Frequencies (2025), Sounding a Black Grammar (2023), '32: The Rescore (2019–2020), For the Record (ifa-Galerie, Berlin, 2018), writing for the eye, writing for the ear (Centre for the Less Good Idea, Johannesburg, 2018), and Buried in the Mix (MEWO Kunsthalle, Memmingen, 2017).

Bhavisha Panchia, Curator at Nothing to Commit Records in Johannesburg, South Africa, has been awarded by Mercedes Vilardell (Mallorca, Spain / London, UK).