Speech Acts
By Geeta Kapur
Published by Tulika Books
New Delhi, 2025

How might one contemplate a nearly six-decade-long career at the forefront of contemporary art criticism? What insights emerge from a professional journey shaped by both a lifelong devotion and skepticism toward the art world? Indian art historian, critic, and curator Geeta Kapur ponders these questions in her latest book, Speech Acts (2025), an anthology of selected essays, lectures, and interviews that present and reevaluate her extensive intellectual legacy, delivering a rare, introspective glimpse into her critical approach to postcolonial art discourse. 

Born in 1943 in New Delhi, Kapur studied art criticism in New York and London. One of the few influential thinkers from the so-called “Third World” (a label she warily adopts) to actively partake in global art discourse since the ‘70s, Kapur has long grappled with her hybrid position between the Global South and the West. Early on in her career, she began to write about India’s post-independence art in relation to its sociopolitical context, and has since become a respected authority on the subcontinent’s modern and contemporary art scene.