A Voyage of Seemingly Propulsive Speed and an Apparent Absolute Stillness: Arshad Hakim | Moonis Ahmad Shah | Sarasija Subramanian

  • Gallery Ark presents A Voyage of Seemingly Propulsive Speed and an Apparent Absolute Stillness with three emerging artists - Arshad Hakim, Moonis Ahmad Shah and Sarasija Subramanian. This multimedia show brings together the artists' responses to three key words - myth, suspension and violence - creating common touchpoints for their distinct practices. 

     

    The exhibition has been curated to function at two registers - the three words serving as conceptual anchors and the artists' response as they think through these words in relation to their individual practices. The show carries an impressive range of mediums including etchings, drawings. LED lights, digital prints, video art and zinc plates, showcasing the range in experimentation by the three artists.

     

    • Myth, a widely held, but 'false' belief or idea. 

      Defined as beliefs and ideas that are 'false', narrated 'colourfully' to talk about happenings outside of human understanding or stories that exist outside of scientific study or laws. 

      A myth, within this framework, questions the concept of what is 'outside', and lays down a parallel set of truths; a metaphor, a tangent, a parallel, an expansion. 

    • Suspension, as a categorical frame, is a condition where time and space, and their perception is out of joint. Social, political, psychological, inebriated states that lead to refracted conceptions of time are space, are states of suspension. 

    • Violence is constitutive of human nature and must be contextualized to be understood.    

      With each passing step, the 'normal' (extended to the idea of the self, or us) attempts to breakdown and communicate with the 'abnormal' (the other or the object we see outside the self) by using a language that is our own. This rift between the language of the abnormal and that of the normal raises questions of violence.

  • Arshad Hakim works around the idea of 'dislodged subjectivities', which he understands as the processes and experiences through which subjective... Arshad Hakim works around the idea of 'dislodged subjectivities', which he understands as the processes and experiences through which subjective... Arshad Hakim works around the idea of 'dislodged subjectivities', which he understands as the processes and experiences through which subjective... Arshad Hakim works around the idea of 'dislodged subjectivities', which he understands as the processes and experiences through which subjective...

     

    Arshad Hakim works around the idea of "dislodged subjectivities", which he understands as the processes and experiences through which subjective views of the world are formed and the registers at which they operate. Arshad's practice explores this through the act of repurposing what could be considered the evidence of past events - old photographs, text, cinematic clips. This pre-existing material highlights the myriad viewpoints that define lived experiences and an individual sense of embodiment. He works primarily with photographs, text-based pieces and video, with a particular interest in non-linear and non-narrative cinema. 

     

     

    ARSHAD HAKIM

    Stages in Return that I Did Not Want, 2016

    Rust transfer, gouache, ink and laser print on paper

    11 X 15 in. 

    ₹ 35,000.00

     

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  • ARSHAD HAKIM Dreams of a Cyborg Trapped in a Drawing by Nasreen Mohamedi, 2015 Rust transfer, gouache, ink and laser print on paper 8.27 X 11.7 in. ₹ 35,000 (View more details about this item in a popup).
    ARSHAD HAKIM Dreams of a Cyborg Trapped in a Drawing by Nasreen Mohamedi, 2015 Rust transfer, gouache, ink and laser print on paper 8.27 X 11.7 in. ₹ 35,000 (View more details about this item in a popup).
    ARSHAD HAKIM Dreams of a Cyborg Trapped in a Drawing by Nasreen Mohamedi, 2015 Rust transfer, gouache, ink and laser print on paper 8.27 X 11.7 in. ₹ 35,000 (View more details about this item in a popup).
    ARSHAD HAKIM Dreams of a Cyborg Trapped in a Drawing by Nasreen Mohamedi, 2015 Rust transfer, gouache, ink and laser print on paper 8.27 X 11.7 in. ₹ 35,000 (View more details about this item in a popup).
    ARSHAD HAKIM Dreams of a Cyborg Trapped in a Drawing by Nasreen Mohamedi, 2015 Rust transfer, gouache, ink and laser print on paper 8.27 X 11.7 in. ₹ 35,000 (View more details about this item in a popup).
    ARSHAD HAKIM Dreams of a Cyborg Trapped in a Drawing by Nasreen Mohamedi, 2015 Rust transfer, gouache, ink and laser print on paper 8.27 X 11.7 in. ₹ 35,000 (View more details about this item in a popup).
    ARSHAD HAKIM Dreams of a Cyborg Trapped in a Drawing by Nasreen Mohamedi, 2015 Rust transfer, gouache, ink and laser print on paper 8.27 X 11.7 in. ₹ 35,000 (View more details about this item in a popup).
    ARSHAD HAKIM Dreams of a Cyborg Trapped in a Drawing by Nasreen Mohamedi, 2015 Rust transfer, gouache, ink and laser print on paper 8.27 X 11.7 in. ₹ 35,000 (View more details about this item in a popup).
    ARSHAD HAKIM
    Dreams of a Cyborg Trapped in a Drawing by Nasreen Mohamedi, 2015
    Rust transfer, gouache, ink and laser print on paper
    8.27 X 11.7 in.
    ₹ 35,000
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  • ARSHAD HAKIM Ouroboros, 2016 LED Running Strip 96 x 12 in. ₹ 50,000.00 This LED strip was conceived while thinking...
     ARSHAD HAKIM
    Ouroboros, 2016
    LED Running Strip
    96 x 12 in.
    ₹ 50,000.00
     
    This LED strip was conceived while thinking through cyclical nature of desire and exhaustion, and the various phases that occur while going through the cycle, phases of resistance, inertia, revolt and hesitation. This oscillation provided the format of writing which is played in loop on the LED strip. Overlaid with these are two lines from Parajanov's  The Color Of Pomegranates;
    "You are fire. Your dress is fire. You are fire. Your dress is black. Which of these two fires can I endure?" which are repurposed to, "I am fire and my dress is made out of fire. I am fire and my dress is not black." In re-purposing this text and answering Parajanov’s question of which fires one can endure, adds to this oscillation, delineating the cyclical movement.
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  • Moonis Ahmad Shah's practice has a strong interdisciplinary approach, straddling the space of hegemonic narratives and archives alongside their radical, futuristic alternatives. Moonis's multimedia practice moves with ease between traditional materials, often culled from mainstream mass media, cinema and historical documents, and the aesthetics of new digital technology and programming language that question the archive's constitution, boundaries and materiality.

     

    Moonis's practice seeks to create a discursive mode of inquiry which examines and challenges the logics, tools and practices of representation which are used to establish the authority of the archive. He aims to subvert this traditional hegemony by creating alternate knowledge systems that can use the archive as a radical tool of resistance. 

    Moonis's primary area of focus is the question of territorial claims - an often incendiary claim that has deep implications on collective and individual identities. Exploring and experimenting with the construct of the archive opens up an important line of questioning on topics that make up contemporary life; issues of surveillance, mass-migration, borders and binaries such as the occident-orient and local-global. The artist's act of "play" with the archive opens the space up for an element of fiction and futuristic fantasy.

     

  • final_everyday from Moonis Ahmad on Vimeo.

    MOONIS AHMAD SHAH

    Accidentally Miraculous Everyday From That Heaven, 2019

    Video

    ₹ 65,000.00

     

    Violence is not always obvious; it is not always explicit or gory as is usually made out to be. In these images, Moonis talks about how the everyday lives of individuals are reconfigured because of the long curfews, born out of a state of suspension. These frames arise out of boredom, each based on the labor the individual performs -therefore these become archives of the conflict.

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  • MOONIS AHMAD SHAH
    Accidentally Miraculous Everyday From That Heaven, 2018
    Archival prints on archival Epson paper
    36 x 60 in.
    2 editions
    ₹ 50,000.00
    MOONIS AHMAD SHAH Accidentally Miraculous Everyday From That Heaven (Priest playing PUBG on a Friday), 2018 Archival prints on archival Epson paper 36 x 60 in. 2 editions ₹ 50,000.00 (View more details about this item in a popup).
    MOONIS AHMAD SHAH Accidentally Miraculous Everyday From That Heaven (Geographer sleeping in the sun on a Monday), 2018 Archival prints on archival Epson paper 36 x 60 in. 2 editions ₹ 50,000.00 (View more details about this item in a popup).
    MOONIS AHMAD SHAH Accidentally Miraculous Everyday From That Heaven (An engineer sewing his old jackets on a Thursday ), 2018 Archival prints on archival Epson paper 36 x 60 in. 2 editions ₹ 50,000.00 (View more details about this item in a popup).
    MOONIS AHMAD SHAH Accidentally Miraculous Everyday From That Heaven (Tutors having an extended breakfast on a Wednesday), 2018 Archival prints on archival Epson paper 36 x 60 in. 2 editions ₹ 50,000.00 (View more details about this item in a popup).
    MOONIS AHMAD SHAH
    Accidentally Miraculous Everyday From That Heaven (Priest playing PUBG on a Friday), 2018
    Archival prints on archival Epson paper
    36 x 60 in.
    2 editions
    ₹ 50,000.00

     

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  • Installation view of The Birds Are Coming
  • MOONIS AHMAD SHAH The Birds are Coming , 2017 UV Print and light box 21 x 17 in. AP ₹... MOONIS AHMAD SHAH The Birds are Coming , 2017 UV Print and light box 21 x 17 in. AP ₹... MOONIS AHMAD SHAH The Birds are Coming , 2017 UV Print and light box 21 x 17 in. AP ₹... MOONIS AHMAD SHAH The Birds are Coming , 2017 UV Print and light box 21 x 17 in. AP ₹... MOONIS AHMAD SHAH The Birds are Coming , 2017 UV Print and light box 21 x 17 in. AP ₹... MOONIS AHMAD SHAH The Birds are Coming , 2017 UV Print and light box 21 x 17 in. AP ₹... MOONIS AHMAD SHAH The Birds are Coming , 2017 UV Print and light box 21 x 17 in. AP ₹... MOONIS AHMAD SHAH The Birds are Coming , 2017 UV Print and light box 21 x 17 in. AP ₹...

     

     

    MOONIS AHMAD SHAH
    The Birds are Coming , 2017
    UV Print and light box
    21 x 17 in.
    AP
    ₹ 130,000.00

     

    In the Birds are coming by Moonis, he curates an archive of birds accused of espionage by various nations. The installation, in the form of light boxes and an interactive web archive, curates their last known photographs, mugshots, and their investigation archives which as claimed in the work are "stolen from the authorities who were responsible for investigating their crimes". The archive itself builds upon a story - one whose credibility is up to the viewer to decide - and allows with it a reading of violence which is rooted not in the images we see in our day to day, but instead in an alternative. The work's context then lies not within its own fictional history, but instead within our perceptions, understanding and experience of violence as viewers, and its consequent illogicality from time to time.

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  • The portraits are failed reconstructions of Soldiers based on the data acquired from various folk stories, poems and oral histories from regions of Germany, France, Switzerland and other parts of Europe. The reconstructions were attempted using a computer Neural Network and Unsupervised Machine Learning algorithm. These soldiers who fought, protected and guarded Europe through various epochs and times ranging from colonial times to World Wars belonged to various regions from around the world such as South Asia. Australia, Malaysia, etc. Or they can be fictional and so can be their process of making, their folk tales and the computer algorithms used to generate them. (View more details about this item in a popup).
    The portraits are failed reconstructions of Soldiers based on the data acquired from various folk stories, poems and oral histories from regions of Germany, France, Switzerland and other parts of Europe. The reconstructions were attempted using a computer Neural Network and Unsupervised Machine Learning algorithm. These soldiers who fought, protected and guarded Europe through various epochs and times ranging from colonial times to World Wars belonged to various regions from around the world such as South Asia. Australia, Malaysia, etc. Or they can be fictional and so can be their process of making, their folk tales and the computer algorithms used to generate them. (View more details about this item in a popup).
    The portraits are failed reconstructions of Soldiers based on the data acquired from various folk stories, poems and oral histories from regions of Germany, France, Switzerland and other parts of Europe. The reconstructions were attempted using a computer Neural Network and Unsupervised Machine Learning algorithm. These soldiers who fought, protected and guarded Europe through various epochs and times ranging from colonial times to World Wars belonged to various regions from around the world such as South Asia. Australia, Malaysia, etc. Or they can be fictional and so can be their process of making, their folk tales and the computer algorithms used to generate them. (View more details about this item in a popup).
    The portraits are failed reconstructions of Soldiers based on the data acquired from various folk stories, poems and oral histories from regions of Germany, France, Switzerland and other parts of Europe. The reconstructions were attempted using a computer Neural Network and Unsupervised Machine Learning algorithm. These soldiers who fought, protected and guarded Europe through various epochs and times ranging from colonial times to World Wars belonged to various regions from around the world such as South Asia. Australia, Malaysia, etc. Or they can be fictional and so can be their process of making, their folk tales and the computer algorithms used to generate them. (View more details about this item in a popup).
    The portraits are failed reconstructions of Soldiers based on the data acquired from various folk stories, poems and oral histories from regions of Germany, France, Switzerland and other parts of Europe. The reconstructions were attempted using a computer Neural Network and Unsupervised Machine Learning algorithm. These soldiers who fought, protected and guarded Europe through various epochs and times ranging from colonial times to World Wars belonged to various regions from around the world such as South Asia. Australia, Malaysia, etc. Or they can be fictional and so can be their process of making, their folk tales and the computer algorithms used to generate them. (View more details about this item in a popup).
    The portraits are failed reconstructions of Soldiers based on the data acquired from various folk stories, poems and oral histories from regions of Germany, France, Switzerland and other parts of Europe. The reconstructions were attempted using a computer Neural Network and Unsupervised Machine Learning algorithm. These soldiers who fought, protected and guarded Europe through various epochs and times ranging from colonial times to World Wars belonged to various regions from around the world such as South Asia. Australia, Malaysia, etc. Or they can be fictional and so can be their process of making, their folk tales and the computer algorithms used to generate them. (View more details about this item in a popup).
    The portraits are failed reconstructions of Soldiers based on the data acquired from various folk stories, poems and oral histories from regions of Germany, France, Switzerland and other parts of Europe. The reconstructions were attempted using a computer Neural Network and Unsupervised Machine Learning algorithm. These soldiers who fought, protected and guarded Europe through various epochs and times ranging from colonial times to World Wars belonged to various regions from around the world such as South Asia. Australia, Malaysia, etc. Or they can be fictional and so can be their process of making, their folk tales and the computer algorithms used to generate them. (View more details about this item in a popup).
    MOONIS AHMAD SHAH
    Some Other People Were Here Too, 2018
    Archival prints on archival Epson paper, algorithm reconstruction and text
    15.7 x 23.5 in.
    Edition 3/3
    ₹ 60,000.00
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  • MOONIS AHMAD SHAH Telegrams to Bollywood from a Mad Landscape Scout, 2018 Print, Ink, Tea on Manually Constructed Telegrams 5... MOONIS AHMAD SHAH Telegrams to Bollywood from a Mad Landscape Scout, 2018 Print, Ink, Tea on Manually Constructed Telegrams 5... MOONIS AHMAD SHAH Telegrams to Bollywood from a Mad Landscape Scout, 2018 Print, Ink, Tea on Manually Constructed Telegrams 5... MOONIS AHMAD SHAH Telegrams to Bollywood from a Mad Landscape Scout, 2018 Print, Ink, Tea on Manually Constructed Telegrams 5... MOONIS AHMAD SHAH Telegrams to Bollywood from a Mad Landscape Scout, 2018 Print, Ink, Tea on Manually Constructed Telegrams 5... MOONIS AHMAD SHAH Telegrams to Bollywood from a Mad Landscape Scout, 2018 Print, Ink, Tea on Manually Constructed Telegrams 5... MOONIS AHMAD SHAH Telegrams to Bollywood from a Mad Landscape Scout, 2018 Print, Ink, Tea on Manually Constructed Telegrams 5... MOONIS AHMAD SHAH Telegrams to Bollywood from a Mad Landscape Scout, 2018 Print, Ink, Tea on Manually Constructed Telegrams 5...
    MOONIS AHMAD SHAH
    Telegrams to Bollywood from a Mad Landscape Scout, 2018
    Print, Ink, Tea on Manually Constructed Telegrams
    5 x 8 in.
    ₹ 15,000.00
     
    During the armed conflict of 1990s, a Bollywood production house hired this scout to go around the world and look for landscapes, similar to those of Kashmir, so that they could continue to shoot romantic Bollywood songs. But after years of travelling, the scout is so overwhelmed by the beauty, that he loses his mind! The telegrams seen here, are his last known "reports"- and they are nothing but beautiful gibberish. These are unreadable, undecipherable with no address or name to go to.
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  • Sarasija Subramanian's practice stems from analogies derived from the organic world in relation to its cultural and political implications. In the process of research, interaction and documentation, her active archive of images and objects continue to grow and incorporate histories and presents. Her practice explores an interesting alternate reading of biodiversity - the point where the manufactured world  meets the natural world,  is where true biodiversity lies; no longer in the depths of the ocean or in the untouched groves in the Amazon, instead at these points of mutual existence.

    From old English volumes of The Herbal Historie of Plants to Indian religious texts, African and Celtic myths, catholic votives of Ex Voto, Imperial archives of the Indian Subcontinents flora and fauna and scientific hatcheries, Sarasija's practice straddles aesthetics and science. 

  • SARASIJA SUBRAMANIAN Sea Monsters / Bred in Captivity / Something's Missing, 2020 Archival prints on archival Epson paper 24 x... SARASIJA SUBRAMANIAN Sea Monsters / Bred in Captivity / Something's Missing, 2020 Archival prints on archival Epson paper 24 x... SARASIJA SUBRAMANIAN Sea Monsters / Bred in Captivity / Something's Missing, 2020 Archival prints on archival Epson paper 24 x... SARASIJA SUBRAMANIAN Sea Monsters / Bred in Captivity / Something's Missing, 2020 Archival prints on archival Epson paper 24 x... SARASIJA SUBRAMANIAN Sea Monsters / Bred in Captivity / Something's Missing, 2020 Archival prints on archival Epson paper 24 x... SARASIJA SUBRAMANIAN Sea Monsters / Bred in Captivity / Something's Missing, 2020 Archival prints on archival Epson paper 24 x...

     

     

     

     SARASIJA SUBRAMANIAN

    Sea Monsters / Bred in Captivity / Something's Missing, 2020 

    Archival prints on archival Epson paper

    24 x 36 in. 

    Edition 4-7/7

    ₹ 15,000.00

     

    Sarasija developed this body of work at a residency in a Coral Hatchery in Ireland, where corals are artificially grown. She studies the relationship between ideas of the man-made and the natural -looking at these sea creatures that are grown artificially and will never have a chance to ‘miss home’ or their natural habitat, which they have never known. She draws parallels between her documentation of creatures in this hatchery, and the mythological sea monsters that appear in Irish, Greek and Indian Legends.

     

     

     

     

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  • SARASIJA SUBRAMANIAN Dictionary of Gardening, 2020 Series of etchings and heat transfers on zinc plates 13 x 10 in. (each)... SARASIJA SUBRAMANIAN Dictionary of Gardening, 2020 Series of etchings and heat transfers on zinc plates 13 x 10 in. (each)... SARASIJA SUBRAMANIAN Dictionary of Gardening, 2020 Series of etchings and heat transfers on zinc plates 13 x 10 in. (each)... SARASIJA SUBRAMANIAN Dictionary of Gardening, 2020 Series of etchings and heat transfers on zinc plates 13 x 10 in. (each)...
    SARASIJA SUBRAMANIAN
    Dictionary of Gardening, 2020
    Series of etchings and heat transfers on zinc plates
    13 x 10 in. (each)
     
    Dictionary of Gardening is a series of etchings and heat transfers on zinc plates, compiling excerpts from different volumes of the Encyclopedia of Horticulture, published in 1887, in London. Each frame is a page, reproduced with edits and alterations, to bring in to focus the instructional nature of the book, its language and the relationships of violence that it points towards, through our need for aesthetics and beauty.
     
     
     
     
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  • SARASIJA SUBRAMANIAN Sea Monsters / And others, the less forgiving ones, they frighten us. , 2019 Graphite and ink drawings... SARASIJA SUBRAMANIAN Sea Monsters / And others, the less forgiving ones, they frighten us. , 2019 Graphite and ink drawings... SARASIJA SUBRAMANIAN Sea Monsters / And others, the less forgiving ones, they frighten us. , 2019 Graphite and ink drawings...
    SARASIJA SUBRAMANIAN
    Sea Monsters / And others, the less forgiving ones, they frighten us. , 2019
    Graphite and ink drawings on baking paper
    15 x 288 in.
    Price on request
     
    PREFACE for the Sea Monsters Scroll
    In Ireland and other parts of Northern Europe, there exists a synonymity between the sea and the un-understood. Oscillating between fear, desire, a lack of control, and yet undeniable yearning, man forges a relationship with the sea through a series of stories – the speculative is mostly fantastical.
    Beyond the fear that is brought about by creatures like the Lochness, there exist a number of monsters that represent love – usually unrequited. These beings, come from the seas, enchant you, and at the cusp of it all, disappear back into the waters – into an abyss that is unattainable, volatile, and yet still.
    There is more to these creatures though, these monsters. Cultures across the globe, for centuries, have been narrating folklore that talks in whispers about such beings. Many of the legends talk of creatures far removed from their own geographical locations; locations that are not seen, might have been heard of, but are definitely imagined.