Year Round
Events
SADEA hosts three recurring series of biannual events on Zoom. These events are open to all for free admission, as we aim to foster community through guest lecturers, insightful dialogue, and panel discussions.
Design Charcha
Insightful dialogue series featuring creative practitioners whose research and collaborations transverse beyond the South Asian diasporic context and perspectives.
The “Design Charcha” series manifests in the form of open conversations, presentations, collaborations, and dialogues. Charcha translates to discussion, debate, or discourse in several South Asian languages. This series aims to bridge the gap between transcontinental perspectives and research by inviting participants from beyond the South Asian diaspora.
SADEA invites practitioners from diverse disciplines—including designers, filmmakers, artists, educators, animators, and cultural and creative workers from around the globe—to share this expansive intellectual space.
JANUARY & AUGUST
Chat Masala
Guest lecture series that honors and features individuals from South Asia and its diaspora, showcasing their diverse explorative design research, collaborations, and practices.
The “Chat Masala” guest lecture series highlights and honors designers from the South Asian diaspora around the globe. Chaat masala is an omnipresent mixture of spices that creates an unforgettable explosion of flavors. This series intends to memorialize the dynamic South Asian designers and educators who center South Asian design histories, and social and cultural narratives in their creative endeavors.
SADEA invites educators, researchers, historians, and practitioners from various design disciplines to share their vibrant practices, and journeys.
MARCH & OCTOBER
YEAR-ROUND
Apna Club
Various events supporting South Asian design students with studying abroad, portfolio development, and collaboration opportunities.
Apna Club furthers SADEA’s goals in creating a community and safe space for educators and students from the South Asian diaspora to come together, share experiences, and support each other. This community fosters collaboration, networking, and knowledge exchange.
Chai Time
Panel discussions where stories of adaptation, South Asian model-minority myths, perceptions and perspectives, challenges, and growth are shared through a long-living tradition of sharing a cup of chai.
Rooted in the cherished South Asian tradition of sharing countless cups of chai over conversations, the “Chai Time” conversation series serves as a platform for stress relief, friendly banter, meaningful intellectual discussions, and lively debates. Embracing this free-flowing format, South Asian design educators in the United States have revived this long-standing tradition to foster culturally motivated discussions and connections.
MAY & DECEMBER
Year Round
Outreach
Collaborations
A crucial part of SADEA’s mission is partnering with design organizations and initiatives that focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. We aim to do this through engaging events, workshops, and collaborative projects.
Posters for Peace and Justice
An invitational poster exhibition curated by SADEA in collaboration with Pouya Jahanshahi’s Design For Peace & Justice. The collection of posters span across design professionals from India and the diaspora in U.S., each with their own interpretation of peace in an Indian context.
A ‘Reflections of Peace’ event was held for participants to present and discuss their final poster designs.
South Asian Graphic Design Add-a-thon
A gathering hosted with Louise Sandhaus on behalf of The People’s Graphic Design Archive. Event attendees were informed about PGDA’s work and collectively added South Asian visual ephemera to this crowd-sourced archive.
Stay tuned for future collaborations!
Presentations
SADEA’s outreach efforts involve presenting at various design industry and academic conferences across the U.S. We are always grateful for the opportunity to use these platforms as avenues for broader participation and interdisciplinary dialogue beyond the SADEA community.
MAY 2024
Collecting Graphic Design: The State of Affairs | National UCDA Design Education Summit: IMMERSE
Arizona State University Polytechnic Campus, Arizona
Brockett Horne (Panel Chair), Archana Shekara, Roshanak Keyghobadi, Mary Yang
Eclipsed by other forms of material culture, Graphic Design is now ripe for collecting. To preserve the valuable contributions that designers have made to the cultural consciousness of the 20th and early 21st century, collecting and sharing with the public is urgent. Moderated by Brockett Horne of The People’s Graphic Design Archive, this panel featured multiple important collections that preserve, analyze, and share valuable designed objects. Panelists described their unique efforts as educators and archivists, highlighting the overlap between design education and collecting.
MARCH 2024
Fostering Inclusivity and Belonging through SADEA | Satellite MACAA Conference
Auburn University, Alabama
Archana Shekara (Panel Chair), Garima Thakur, Amrita Datta, Muhammad Rahman
The panelists from SADEA shared their mission and goals on how the organization is elevating the unique creativity emerging from South Asia and its diaspora in a global context.
FEBRUARY 2023
Dichotomizing Pluralities: Visual Cultures of the Indian Subcontinent | 111th Annual CAA Annual Conference
College Art Association, New York
Neeta Verma (Panel Chair), Archana Shekara (Discussant), Aasavari Kulkarni, Arun Mascanrenhas, Shantanu Suman
With a tortuous and complicated history, India today stands at the confluence of several years of assimilation of cultures that poured into the land over the centuries. Of these, the two most significant are the Mughals that ruled India roughly from 1526 to 1857, and then the British, that colonized the country from 1858 to 1947. The panel examined this confluence of influences and the impact these two specific periods had on the centuries-old traditions of language, and communication through a process of assimilation to arrive at the visual cultures that have emerged today in the Indian subcontinent.
MAY 2022
Seeking Allyship to Redefine Agency for International Faculty and Student Success | National UCDA Design Education Summit: AGENCY
East Tennessee State University, Tennessee
Shantanu Suman (Panel Chair), Archana Shekara, Garima Thakur, Nikhil Ghodke
The panel addressed adversities experienced by international design faculty who arrived in the United States to pursue a graduate degree as students and are trying to (re)establish their Agency while navigating through conventional academic structures.
Stay tuned for future presentations!