Signing you in

The showcase has brought together established and emerging South Asian artists exploring ecology, identity, memory and materiality. Alongside those, two curatorial exhibitions by Adwait Singh and Annalisa Mansukhani are offering distinct inquiries into the present.

Occupying the LTC Building, Singh’s curatorial exhibition ‘Bye-Bye Monsoon’ draws on author Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement to examine shifting monsoonal patterns and historical climate breakdown. Singh notes that the exhibition takes Ghosh’s provocation to heart by asking artists to “delineate weather events in words, visuals and sounds”, resulting in insightful explorations, ranging from “Bombay’s mangrove ecologies to wider shifts in rainfall patterns across South Asia and Africa”.

Mansukhani’s ‘This Animate Earth’ turns to the botanical realm as a site of knowledge and political geography. She shares that she aimed to “delimit the botanical as a symbol of beauty and transience, and instead delve deeper into acts of growing”, highlighting how plant histories entangle with “empire, lived realities of caste, indigenous rights and extractive notions of progress”.

Rasika Kajaria, director, Exhibit 320, believes the contribution of the Delhi Contemporary Art Week is immense in “demonstrating what is possible when galleries come together with a shared commitment to supporting contemporary art”.

(The Delhi Contemporary Art Week is on at Bikaner House, New Delhi, from August 31 to September 5)