Commencement Press Release

Noted New York-based artist, writer and lecturer, Swati Khurana ‘93, a PDS alumna will be the featured speaker at Poughkeepsie Day School’s Class of 2015 Commencement on Wednesday, June 10. Head of school Josie Holford and Amanda Thornton, president of the school’s board of trustees, will award diplomas to 38 seniors, who hail from Dutchess, Ulster and Orange counties and China.

Since the Town of Poughkeepsie independent school graduated its first high school class in 1970, this rite of passage has been witnessed by all students and faculty in addition to the graduates’ families and friends. Seniors will participate in the ceremonies through giving a speech, reading or performance, and the school’s jazz ensemble will perform. The event begins at 10:00 am in the school’s gymnasium. The event will be livestreamed at: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/pds-tv

Swati received a B.A. in history from Columbia University. She holds an M.A. with distinction in studio art and art criticism from New York University and attended their intensive studio program at the Instituto Universitario di Architettura in Venice, Italy. She recently completed an M.F.A. in fiction at Hunter College of the City University of New York.

Her videos, collages, drawings, sculptures and installations mine personal narratives and explore immigrant issues with a focus on gender, popular culture and the seductive promises made by rituals. Her work has been exhibited locally and in galleries and museums around the United States and in Europe and India; travel grants and appointments as artist-in-residence have taken her from New York City to Costa Rica, Mexico and West Africa.

Swati’s community-based projects include serving as a Bronx Museum––sponsored artist-in-residence at Bronx International High School, a new public school for recent immigrant and refugee students. She is a founding member of the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective (SAWCC), a NYC-based organization dedicated to the visibility and development of South Asian women artists.

Swati’s writing has appeared in Columbia Review, Asian American Literary Review, the South Asian literary journal Jaggery, Bloom, The Weeklings journal, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood and The Feminist Wire and received an honorable mention in Glimmer Train Press’s Very Short Fiction Contest.