Strictly speaking, I have more than one home. I grew up in Kolkata (India) and studied in New Delhi (India) before moving to London (UK) to pursue my abiding interest in art and film curation. I am currently based in and working out of London.
As a film critic and programmer, I gravitate towards short-form storytelling, found footage cinema, and cinematic hauntologies. As an art writer and curator, I am interested in the intersection of image histories, archival politics, and narratives of repair.
I have bylines in several publications, including Sight and Sound, Time Out, ArtReview Asia, Talking Shorts, Ultra Dogme, Momus, Art Monthly, ART India, ASAP Connect, e-flux Criticism, and PhotoSouthAsia. I have written for catalogues and anthologies by Serendipity Arts Foundation (New Delhi), Museum of Art and Photography (Bangalore), Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2022, Rowman and Littlefield (Maryland), and Edition Fink (Switzerland); and curatorial notes for Kunstkasten Winterthur, Project 88, Gallery Maskara, The Guild, Vadehra Art Gallery, and Experimenter.
I am a recipient of the Art Scribes Award 2022 (conferred by Prameya Art Foundation, La Napoule Art Foundation and Institut Francais) and the Art Writer’s Award 2018 (conferred by TAKE on Art magazine and Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia), having attended the respective residencies at Château de la Napoule, France (2023) and Villa Sträuli, Switzerland (2019). The Art Scribes Award culminated with my curated group exhibition, titled “Notes on Omission“, mounted at Alliance Française de Delhi in December 2024.
Having pivoted to film programming over the past 2 years, I curated artist film and moving image programmes for London Indian Film Festival, London Short Film Festival, Queer East Festival, and Go Short Film Festival, besides virtual programmes on This.Is.Short and yanco. More recently, I was selected to take part in the Talking Shorts/END European Workshop for New Curators #2 (facilitated by Daniella Shreir, Founder and Editor of Another Gaze Journal and Another Screen streaming) and the British Film Institute Critics Mentorship Programme 2025 (facilitated by Akua Gyamfi, Founder of The British Blacklist, and Amon Warmann, Editor at Empire magazine).
In June 2026, I presented my burgeoning ideas on decolonial film programming in the form of a presentation titled “Decolonial Playlists: Recentring South Asian Cinema” at the Eye International Conference 2026, held at the EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam.
I have a B.A. with Honours in English Literature from Presidency University, Kolkata, an M.A. in Arts and Aesthetics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. I pursued a second M.A. in Film Programming and Curating from Birkbeck, University of London, with the support of the Charles Wallace India Trust Scholarship from British Council India.
Follow me on Instagram @notnajjrin and get in touch at najrin.islam.24@gmail.com.
