IN PERSON

RSVP

Program Schedule:

2:00 – 2:45 PM: Conversation with Neelanjana Banerjee and Syona Puliady
2:45 – 4:30 PM: Zine-making workshop led by Samantha Chen
4:30 – 5:00 PM: Community zine share and light refreshments

Inspired by the Fowler’s newest Galleria exhibition, Field Notes from Begumpura by artist Rahee Punyashloka, this special program will explore South Asian histories, cultures, and lived experiences through art, design, and independent publishing. Together, we will consider how creative practices can challenge oppression and discrimination, subvert stereotypes, reclaim agency and self-representation, and imagine more just and equitable futures.

The afternoon will begin with a conversation between Fowler Curator of Textiles Syona Puliady and Managing Editor at Kaya Press Neela Banerjee. They will explore the historical and cultural contexts that inform Punyashloka’s work, examining how visual language, symbolism, and design communicate political ideas and social critique. The discussion will pay particular attention to how the artist engages with histories of caste, identity, and inequality, while also considering the role of speculative fiction, worldbuilding, and independent publishing as creative forms of resistance. Through these practices, art, design, and storytelling can preserve cultural knowledge, foster empowerment, and expand representation for South Asian communities.

Drawing inspiration from these ideas, participants will then take part in a hands-on zine-making workshop led by Getty Marrow Intern in Public Programs Samantha Chen. Through guided creative exercises, they will learn how zines can serve as accessible tools for self-expression, visual storytelling, community publishing, and documenting history and lived experience. The workshop will also explore zines as a medium for speculative design and radical imagination, inviting participants to envision worlds beyond systems of oppression. The program will conclude with an informal community share, where all will be invited to present their zines, reflect on the creative process, and connect with one another over light refreshments.

All zine-making materials will be provided. Participants are welcome to bring personal photographs, magazines, stickers, drawings, or other collage materials they would like to incorporate into their zines.

Neelanjana Banerjee is managing editor of Kaya Press, where she recently launched Kulhar Books, an imprint dedicated to stylistically and politically imaginative South Asian diasporic literature. She teaches Asian American literature, creative writing, and publishing at UCLA, Loyola Marymount University, and in USC’s Literary Editing and Publishing Program. Her fiction, poetry, essays, and journalism have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Harper’s Bazaar, The Texas Observer, and other publications. She is co-editor of Indivisible: An Anthology of South Asian American Poetry, the first contemporary anthology dedicated to South Asian American poetry.

Samantha Chen is the 2026 Getty Marrow Intern in Public Programs at the Fowler Museum. She is a rising senior at UCLA majoring in design media arts and double minoring in film, television & digital media and Asian American studies. Her creative practice explores graphic design, filmmaking, branding, and multimedia storytelling as tools for engaging diverse cultures, experiences, and communities, particularly within the Asian American diaspora.

Syona Puliady is curator of textiles of the Eastern Hemisphere at the Fowler Museum. Her research focuses on histories and textiles of the Indian Ocean realm. Her work also takes her to the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where she collaborates with artists and garment laborers who weave their identities into the Tamil landscape of visual, sensory, and performing arts.

This program is presented in partnership with Kaya Press

Image credit: Artworks by Rahee Punyashloka