Reminiscing collective acts of resistance through art

“Perhaps your eyes shall apprehend one day/Every soiled page, left blank by the arrest of the Word.” These verses written by poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz during his time in the Montgomery Central Jail in Pakistan inform the title and premise of an exhibition put up by the Ishara Art Foundation.

The non-profit organisation founded in 2019 by Dubai-resident and art collector Smita Prabhakar is dedicated to contemporary art from South Asia and Every Soiled Page is their fourth exhibition. Curated by Sabih Ahmed, it seeks to explore art as a site for reverse archaeology and the notion of witnessing
and forming collective memories, beyond the human, to planetary dimensions of remembering. The
question this exhibition puts forward is: “If indeed, history and time inscribe themselves onto the earth and encode themselves into all forms of life, where shall we begin reading?” The exhibit features paintings, drawings, prints and installation by artists Anju Dodiya, Astha Butail, Neha Choksi, Praneet Soi and Sunil Padwal along with a new commissioned performance installation by Inder Salim.

The works focus on a variety of materials and surfaces on which memories, imprints, traces and songs reside and invite the spectator to think about how they carry them. Butail’s artworks speaks of
constructing rich circular narratives which explore the history of myth and the archival oral form, elements in nature and fragments of lost knowledge and language. Butail says, “The abstraction of
a circle or the circular pattern in nature or oral traditions brings me closer to an inner dwelling, connected through many doors and windows.” The exhibition will continue till 19 December.