SHEETAL AGARWAL
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Sheetal is an artist, photographer and award winning documentary filmmaker. Her documentaries have won several international awards including the Michael Moore Award Best Documentary Film at the 44th Ann Arbor Film Festival and the Best Documentary KODAK Award at the 20th Annual Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival. She was one of eight worldwide selections by Saatchi and Saatchi to do a short film in China. Her recent documentary “Please Choose Me” was screened at the Hong Kong Space Museum in 2017. Her academic research in documentary has examined the nuances of reality portrayed in the genre.
Sheetal has been painting and using mixed media fort her artwork since childhood. Her art explores themes that she has explored and been inspired by as a documentary filmmaker and scholar – memories, representations of reality and reflections on the nature of historical truth. Her artwork has been exhibited in Singapore, Spain, Germany, New York, Hong Kong and London. Sheetal has exhibited at the Affordable Art Fair Hong Kong 2017, London Art Biennale 2017, XIth Florence Biennale in 2017 and is selected as an exhibitor at the Oxford International Art Fair 2018 and Rotterdam International Art Fair 2018. She is also represented by Artspace Warehouse a US based gallery who has previously exhibited at the Affordable Art Fair Hong Kong 2017.
ACADEMIC RESEARCH
Sheetal was a PhD candidate under the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme at Lingnan University Hong Kong from Aug 2011 to June 2013. Her research focused on the impact of technology on the theory and practice of documentary films, and specifically on the nature of documentary truth. Her thesis explored the relationship between truth in documentary and the contextualization of photographic (and moving) images, image manipulation and editing, narrative construction and authorial intentions, specially with technology that enables the creation of multiple narratives - versions of the ‘truth’ - out of the same raw audio-visual material.
Sheetal also taught VIS201, a second year undergraduate course titled “Visual Culture and Digital Media” in the first semester of the academic year 2011-2012, Preparing the coursework, lectures, reading lists, examination papers and graded the students. The course was singled out for special praise in the External Academic Advisor’s report on the Bachelor of Visual Studies (Hons) Programme for the academic year 2011-2012
Sheetal is a Masters in Fine Arts from the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong (2005), and graduated with a GPA of 3.9/4
