Notations on Time is a group exhibition that explores the philosophical and political dimensions of time through the works of 20 contemporary artists from South Asia and its diaspora. Curated by Sandhini Poddar and Sabih Ahmed, the exhibition stages a dialogue between artistic generations to highlight entanglements between the past, present and future.
The exhibition exists as a veritable laboratory of time, exploring art in notational, experimental and fragmentary forms. Standing apart from Western notions of linearity, progress and capitalist domination, Notations on Time explores ontological systems that reveal how artists from this region and its diaspora think about aesthetics, existence, remembrance and futurity.
Where and how do we ‘read’ time? On bodies, skins, machines, rivers, landscapes, and stars. Within wormholes in cosmic space and underground, in unseen root systems, within site-readings from archaeological and evidentiary fieldwork, within ancestry and oral traditions, within myths, folklore, and storytelling, within science fiction and mixed realities, within long-dead stars in the cosmos viewed through powerful telescopes, and so much more. The exhibition poses questions such as, ‘what happens when residues from the past are reincarnated into the future? Where does the jurisdiction of the present end? What is the future of the past? What possibilities can the space of an exhibition offer to think through these questions?’
Notations on Time includes works by Soumya Sankar Bose, Sheba Chhachhi, Shezad Dawood, Ladhki Devi, Gauri Gill & Rajesh Vangad, Aziz Hazara, Amar Kanwar, Ali Kazim, Mariah Lookman, Haroon Mirza, Anoli Perera, Lala Rukh, Jangarh Singh Shyam, Dayanita Singh, Ayesha Sultana, Jagdish Swaminathan, Chandraguptha Thenuwara, and Zarina, accompanied by an infra-vocabulary from Raqs Media Collective’s book ‘Seepage’.
Artworks for this exhibition have been loaned from the Ishara Art Foundation and the Prabhakar Collection, the private collections of Taimur Hassan, Lekha & Anupam Poddar, and Shweta & Vikram Puri.
The exhibition has been supported by Taimur Hassan.
Logistical support from Jhaveri Contemporary (Mumbai), Lisson Gallery (London), and Saskia Fernando Gallery (Colombo).
QUOTES BY THE CURATORS
Sandhini Poddar, Art Historian and Adjunct Curator at the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project
“Time experienced while incarcerated in jail is time that has been taken out of any classificatory system. How long does it take for photosynthesis to take place on a leaf’s surface? Can we ‘hear’ this time pass as the leaf moves towards the sun? Time exists in innumerable, simultaneous registers.”
Sabih Ahmed, Associate Director and Curator at Ishara Art Foundation
“Notations on Time is an experiment in conjuring an eco-system of time where dreams intersect with history, and seasonal cycles with the measure of each breath. This exhibition is an attempt to read time against an urge to measure it, where works of art serve as fragments, haikus and ciphers.”
