Pooja Sood is a founding member and Director of Khoj International Artists’ Association, a not-for-profit society committed to experimentation and exchange in the visual arts in India. Under her stewardship, Khoj has grown from an annual event in 1997 to a small but vibrant building-based institution which plays a central role in the development of experimental, interdisciplinary, and critical contemporary art practice in India and South Asia.

As Director of Khoj she has worked actively to build a robust network of experimental spaces across south Asia, resulting in the South Asian Network for the Arts (SANA). Pooja Sood’s contribution has been in the field of curating alternative contemporary art practices in India, as well as exploring different models of collaboration and institution-building in India and South Asia.

Amongst other projects, she was the Artistic Director and Curator of 48°C. Public. Art. Ecology (2007-2008), the first public art project in India, which commissioned 25 art projects by renowned Indian and International artists, across ten public sites in New Delhi. She was also the Curator of the Apeejay Media Gallery (2002-2007), the first dedicated space for new media art in India, as well as Curator/Director for the Eicher Gallery(1994-1998), New Delhi.

Sood has served on several international juries, most recently the Omega Resilience Awards (2023), the Nordic Cultural Fund (2022-2023), the Rockefeller – Care Fellowship for Bellagio (2022), and has been an advisor and mentor for the South-South Asia Fellowship (2022-2023). She has been a Patron of the international organization More Europe since 2009, and was a member of the Steering Group Committee on Arts Management for the Government of India (2014). 

A Chevening scholar for the Clore Leadership Programme, UK (2009-2011), Pooja Sood has also served as Director-General of the Jawahar Kala Kendra, a multidisciplinary cultural space in Jaipur (November 2015 – February 2019).

Sood lives and works in New Delhi.

Image credits: Courtesy of the producer