Chaitanya Sambrani

Chaitanya Sambrani is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Art History & Art Theory within the School of Art & Design at the Australian National University. He serves as the Convenor of Higher Degrees by Research, overseeing the MPhil and PhD programs, and is also the Convenor of the research hub Asia: Innovation and Transformation at the School. Sambrani is a member of ANU's South Asia Research Institute (SARI), where he served as Deputy Director in 2018-19, and was nominated Honorary Professor at the Fakultas Seni Rupa dan Desain at the Institut Teknologi Bandung in 2019.

Sambrani holds a PhD in Art History and Curatorship from The Australian National University, with his dissertation titled "Nation-Tradition-Modernism: Indian Art in the 20th Century." He also earned an MA (Fine) from MSU, Baroda. His research focuses on modern and contemporary art in South and Southeast Asia, with particular interest in the relationships between art and nationhood, art practice and belonging, transnational and cosmopolitan histories of art, and contemporary art's relationships with traditional practice.

Sambrani has curated several major exhibitions including "Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India" (shown at museums in Australia, USA, Mexico and India over 2004-07), "Place.Time.Play: Contemporary Art from the West Heavens to the Middle Kingdom" (Shanghai, 2010), and "All that Arises," a mid-career survey of Lao-Australian artist Savanhdary Vongpoothorn (Canberra, 2019). Analysis of his recent publications reveals a strong focus on contemporary art politics in South Asia, particularly India and Indonesia, examining how artists navigate issues of national identity, cultural belonging, and political expression within transnational contexts.

Sambrani has received notable recognition including the 'Ganesa Widya Jasa Utama' award from Institut Teknologi Bandung in 2022. He serves as Curatorial Advisor at several major institutions including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; the Powerhouse Museum (2022); and the National Gallery of Australia (2018-2019).

As a supervisor, Sambrani has guided numerous research students to completion across various art disciplines, with recent completions in 2024 including Gillian Daniel's "Topographic Imaginaries" and Soo-Min Shim's "Borders and Belonging." He currently supervises three PhD candidates. His major research project "The 'Wonders' that Basham Saw" is an interdisciplinary digital project analyzing the visual archives of Professor A.L. Basham, conducted in collaboration with colleagues at ANU, the National Gallery of Australia, National University of Singapore and the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.

Sambrani co-founded the Australasian Network for Asian Art (an4aa.org) and served on the Network's inaugural Coordinating Group from 2020-2023. His interdisciplinary approach bridges art history, curatorial practice, and digital humanities, creating innovative frameworks for understanding contemporary art in transnational contexts.