Featured Evening Speaker

Filter Photo is pleased to present the 2023 Filter Photo Festival Featured Evening Lecture by Poulomi Basu.

Poulomi Basu (Indian, b. 1983) is a neurodiverse artist known for her exploration of the interrelationship between systems of power and bodies through work that exists at the limits of art, technology, and activism. She has become widely known for her influential works Blood Speaks, Centralia, To Conquer Her Land, and Fireflies, to name a few. Her focus on the intersectionality of ecological, racial, cultural, and political issues experienced specifically by womxn of the global south—such as herself—gives agency to those whose voices are deliberately silenced. She has ferociously advocated for womxn through her practice as an artist and activist for more than a decade. Shifting between mediums, Basu has to date worked with photography, performance, installation, virtual reality, and film influenced by magical realism, sci-fi, and speculative fiction.

Basu was awarded the 2023 ICP Infinity Award for outstanding contribution to Contemporary Photography and New Media. Her first photobook, Centralia, was published by Dewi Lewis in 2020. The book and exhibition won the 2020 Rencontres d'Arles Discovery Award Jury Prize, and was shortlisted for the prestigious 2021 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, among many others. She was invited to SXSW 2019 and the 78th La Biennale Cinema Venezia “Production Bridge.” Basu was awarded the prestigious Hood Medal by the Royal Photographic Society for her transmedia work Blood Speaks, which put menstrual rights on the international agenda and resulted in a major policy change.