Film Screening
When The Towel Drops Vol 1 by Radha May

Artist Presentation
Nupur Mathur

Tuesday, 7 May 2026
6 :30 PM
At FICA Reading Room, New Delhi

Nupur Mathur will share notes from her practice and her encounters with archives in a film screening + talk format that will be followed by an open conversation.

When The Towel Drops Vol 1 | Italy, by the art collective Radha May, is a film made entirely of scenes that were removed from publicly screened cinema in Italy during the 1950s and 1960s. Censored scenes in the film include scenes from films such as Zabriskie Point and La Notte by Michelangelo Antonioni and Brink of Life by Ingmar Bergman.

The project is a documentation of the institutional regimentation of the female body and desire. It contemplates questions of hidden histories and hidden narratives and the fears that underpin gestures of concealment and censorship. The project not only asks us to consider how far removed our contemporary ideas of female sexuality are from those of 60 years ago, but to also consider what it means to circulate into public domain and memory that which was once hidden.

About the discussants :

Nupur Mathur is a research based artist that creates image, sound, and text based encounters with colonial legacies and hegemonic systems of regulation in the form of films, printed matter, workshops & mixed-media installations. With tenderness and humor, she explores how instruments of control—such as immigration law, gender norms, or state sponsored censorship—intersect with our material realities and collective imagination. Her research draws from institutional archives, movies, social media, journalism and artifacts of public memory.

Radha May is Elisa Giardina Papa, Bathsheba Okwenje and Nupur Mathur.