Biography

Ashish Chadha / Ashish Avikunthak is a filmmaker and a cultural anthropologist. Named Future Greats 2014 by Art Review, Ashish Avikunthak has been making films for more than 20 years. His films have been the subject of more than a dozen retrospectives, sixteen solo shows and they have been shown world wide in major films festivals, group shows and museums. Notable screenings were at the Tate Modern, London, Centre George Pompidou, Paris, Berlinale 2017, Shanghai Biennial 2014, Taipei Biennial 2012, Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, along with London, Rotterdam, and Locarno film festivals among other locations. He has had retrospective of his works at Wolf Kino, Berlin (2019), Bard College (2015), Rice University (2014), Signs Festival, Trivandrum (2013), Festival International Signes de Nuit, Paris (2012), Yale University (2008), and National Centre for Performing Arts, Mumbai (2008) and Les Inattendus, Lyon (2006). He is represented by Chatterjee & Lal in India and Aicon Gallery in the United States.

His scholarly works have been published in the Journal of Social Archaeology, Journal of Material Culture, Contributions to Indian Sociology and The Indian Economic and Social History Review among other publications. He has also written opinion pieces for the Wire, Scroll, The Hindu and Hindustan Times. He has a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Stanford University and before coming to URI, he had taught at Yale University.