Rani Som | Visiting Artist Lecture Series

Rani Som is inspired by the grammar of comics and graphic novels, seeking to expand the vocabulary of the narratives traditionally presented in this medium by exploring themes of gender, sexuality, memory and urbanism. On a formal level, some of Som’s pieces conflate the tools of architectural representation with those of sequential narrative in order to question these very methods and offer new means of representing space, time and the role of the body in both simultaneously.

Som has two graphic novels, “Apsara Engine,” a collection of eight short stories, and “Spellbound,” a graphic memoir published by Street Noise Books. Som’s comics work has previously appeared in The New Yorker, “We’re Still Here (The first all-trans comics anthology),” The Strumpet, The Boston Review, VICE, Buzzfeed and more. Som received the prestigious Xeric grant in 2003 for the comics collection “Angel.”

The Visiting Artist Lecture Series, which features approximately 25 contemporary artists each semester, is free to attend and open to the public.