Self, Power, and Identity: Artists in Conversation

Event Title:
Self, Power, and Identity: Rum Hansra and Sayak Mitra in Conversation with Divya Rao Heffley.

Please join us in a thought-provoking conversation as we delve into the personal and artistic journeys of Rum and Sayak; crossing borders, crossing cultures, and creating art between the blurred lines of self and place.

Rum Hansra is a mixed media artist whose practice explores memory, identity, and the ever-evolving transformation of the self—a continuous process of becoming. Working with acrylics, collage, photography, text, and textiles, she creates layered compositions that trace the boundaries between self and world, past and present. Her process of building, erasing, and reworking reflects the instability of memory and the we reconstruct meaning through time.

After a career in information technology, Hansra turned to art as a means of inquiry and renewal—a way to translate systems of bits and bytes into more tactile, human expressions of memory and perception. Her work treats contradiction as an essential condition of experience, where tension and harmony continually inform each other. Each piece becomes an act of memorialization; an attempt to capture moments of joy, loss, and transformation on a mostly two-dimensional surface.

Rum Hansra is based in San Francisco, California and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Recently her work was shown at mossArchitects gallery and previously at Atithi gallery in a group show.

Sayak Mitra is primarily a painter and interdisciplinary artist. Sayak is interested in the concepts of reification and verisimilitude — Sayak’s work challenges the neo-liberal mode of multicultural profiterian economy and sales pitch of egalitarian promises, as well as exchanging ideas from class struggle to gig economy, subculture to semiotics, for example, ecriture, facsimile, inforgraphic, newsmedia, etc., to expose otherism that society claims to overcome. Sayak was born and raised in Konnagar, a suburb of Kolkata, and lives in the U.S. with a humanitarian visa. Sayak studied Electrical Engineering, Multimedia, and Painting from Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology, Jadavpur University, and Boston University, respectively. Sayak’s writings were published in ABP Publications, Bongodorshon, the magazine of Boston University’s Department of History of Art & Architecture. Sayak exhibited, collaborated, and participated in residencies in India and abroad. Sayak co-founded artist-group Ocular in 2006 and, winning awards like the Hugh and Marjorie Petersen Award for Public Art and the Atul Bose Award for Painting.

Divya Rao Heffley is an arts professional with twenty-five years of experience in public art, museums, and art and architectural history. As the Associate Director for Shiftworks Community + Public Arts, Divya works with artists, clients, and communities on public art commissions and residencies that address a range of contemporary issues, seeking to foster justice and equity in public space. She serves on the Board of Directors of UpstreamPgh and on the Advisory Committee for the Arts Education Collaborative, and has been a juror for numerous artist selection panels, grants, and portfolio reviews. Prior to joining Shiftworks, Divya managed the Hillman Photography Initiative at Carnegie Museum of Art from 2013-2018. She holds a PhD in the History of Art and Architecture from Brown University and a BA in the History of Art from Yale University, and is a recipient of the Carter Manny Award from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

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