Kajri Jain and Kirtika Kain in conversation

Kajri Jain (PhD University of Sydney) is Professor of Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Toronto. Her work on the interface between art, religion, politics, caste, and vernacular business cultures in modern and contemporary India includes Gods in the Bazaar: The Economies of Indian Calendar Art, on popular prints (Duke University Press, 2007), and Gods in the Time of Democracy, on the emergence of monumental statues alongside economic liberalization (Duke University Press, 2021). She also writes on contemporary art and on the discipline of art history, including in The Routledge Companion to Decolonizing Art History (2023) and How Secular Is Art? On The Politics of Art, History, and Religion in South Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2023).

Kirtika Kain is an artist and educator working on Dharug land. Combining elements of sculpture, experimental printmaking and painting. Kain’s practice draws from her Dalit lineage and investigates material histories, ancestral memory and the complexities of caste in the diaspora. Her materials are those of ritual and labour, including pigments, wax, gold and tar, challenging notions of sanctity, touch, stigma and purity while acknowledging the culture of Dalit people. She is a current recipient of the Parramatta Artist Studio Program, and has undertaken residencies at the British School at Rome (2019), the Cité Internationale des arts, Paris (2023), and Creative Australia’s Acme London Residency (2025).