School of Media Studies

Radhika’s work-in-progress, on a medieval elephant embassy, draws on textual as well as ethnographic and embodied research in Germany, Italy, Tunisia, and India to tell the story—part animal biography, part narrative of migration and human-elephant relationships, and part quest—and to explore the fool’s errand as part of research.

Radhika Subramaniam is a 2018-19 GIDEST Fellow and Associate Professor of Visual Culture at Parsons School of Design where, from 2009-17, she was the first Director/Chief Curator of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center (SJDC). Through exhibition, public art, and texts, she explores the poetics and politics of crises and surprises, particularly urban crowds, walking, cultures of catastrophe, art, and human-animal relationships.