The lecture will focus on the genesis of Maya: The Birth of a Superhero and beyond. Basu will trace her background and evolving artistic journey. The artist will discuss what it means to be a creator and explore expanded, intersectional, interactive storytelling with a focus on ‘acts’ of change and resistance-based practices. The lecture will end with a Q&A session.
About Poulomi
Poulomi Basu 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, film, creative technologies, and activism.
Her work moves across borders and is definitive of her transnational identity, across interdisciplinary, interactive installations and experimental media.
Even though the centre of her works are often women of the Global South (non-Euro-centric), her art and its histories are connected beyond their places of origin. Her works challenge and revise dominant histories by her transformative approach to exchanges and the flow of experience.
Basu’s diverse body of work is committed to multiplicity. Eschewing linear notions of history, her approach to investigating themes such as the shifting notions surrounding landscape and the conditions of female experience are cyclical in nature. With roots in photography, her practice demonstrates a fidelity to no single artistic modality or creative process; rather, interdisciplinary pursuits that are in constant, active flux.
Her name sounds like ‘follow me’ with a ‘P’. She was raised by her mother in Calcutta, India and found early inspiration in the city’s rich cinematic history. After her father’s sudden death when Poulomi was 17, her mother told her to leave home as soon as her studies were complete so that she may follow her dreams and live a life of breadth and choices that was denied to her.
She has become widely known for her influential works Blood Speaks, Centralia, To Conquer Her Land, and Fireflies. Her focus on the intersectionality of ecological, racial, cultural, political and personal collisions gives agency to those whose voices are deliberately silenced. Shifting between mediums, Basu often combines the real and the fantastical, working with photography, performance, installation, virtual and mixed reality, and film influenced by magical realism.
Date: Wednesday, April 15 2026
Time: 3:30-4:30pm (EDT)
Location: Studio X - Carlson Library, First Floor & Zoom
Register to attend
The Voices of XR speaker series is presented by the Center for eXtended Reality, in partnership with Mary Ann Mavrinac Studio X, University Libraries. This series is made possible by Kathy McMorran Murray.
