The painting department at Rhode Island School of Design has begun its 2026-27 Kirloskar Visiting Scholars programme, bringing three artists to the Providence campus for a year of teaching, conversation and studio exchange. Pallavi Sen, Asif Hoque and Mala Iqbal are the artists taking part, and their arrival marks the start of a season of public programming built around their practices.

The programme opens with a group exhibition, The Imaginary Quotidian, installed in the school's Memorial Hall Gallery and on view through November 6. The show brings the three visitors together in one space, giving students and the wider Providence audience a first look at the work and ideas each artist is carrying into the year.

Visiting scholar programmes of this kind are designed to put working artists in close, sustained contact with students rather than limiting the exchange to a single lecture. Over the coming months the three artists will spend time in studios and classrooms, offering painting students direct access to practitioners whose work moves between different traditions, materials and cultural reference points. The scholars' stay is structured around that sustained contact: time in the studios, conversations with students, and public events that grow out of the work, with the exhibition as the public face of the exchange and the first chance for the wider RISD community to see the three practices side by side.

For the painting department, the Kirloskar programme is a way of widening the conversation inside the school, pairing its own faculty and students with outside voices for an extended period. The exhibition runs until November 6, with further programming from the three visiting scholars continuing through the academic year.