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Pop Art is often understood as an aesthetic investigation into capitalist modernity, largely by artists based in metropolitan Western centers like London or New York. How might the category of Pop Art be useful for considering the forms capitalist modernity takes in the Global South, including the process of uneven development, disjunctive temporalities, and the intermingling of the sacred and the profane? This lecture discusses the artworks of Elizabeth and Iftikhar Dadi toward an alternate genealogy of Pop Art. In their latest work the artists start from photographs and render them into seemingly non-photographic forms to investigate questions concerning production and creation, democracy, and the passage of time. 

Zahid R. Chaudhary specializes in postcolonial studies, visual culture, and critical theory. His first book, Afterimage of Empire, examines early photography in India to explore colonial perception, truth, and embodiment. His second, Paranoid Publics, analyzes the psychosocial dynamics of conspiracy cultures, anti-democratic movements, and new media. His current project, Impunity: Notes on a Global Tendency, studies juridical, political, and aesthetic dimensions of impunity from the Cold War to today across postcolonial and U.S. contexts. He has published widely on photography, film, psychoanalysis, and visual culture.

Event image credit: Elizabeth Dadi & Iftikhar Dadi, Azimech, 2026