“…the idea of accumulating everything, the idea of constituting a sort of general archive, the desire to contain all times, all ages, all forms, all tastes in one place, the idea of constituting a place of all times that is itself outside time and protected from its erosion, the project of thus organizing a kind of perpetual and indefinite accumulation of time in a place that will not move – well, in fact, all of this belongs to our modernity.”

– Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge

Art Heritage presents Archaeology of the Self: Archives, Anarchives and the Artist, curated by Dr. Arshiya M Lokhandwalla, is a proposition to artists to delve deep into their own practice, to excavate/exhume a significant engagement that ties in the past, present and future with a specific body of work or a period of their practice through the lens of their own personal archive.

For the artist the archive is a source of inspiration and material as they engage discursively with historical and cultural artifacts, including photographs, documents and objects. Art Historian, Hal Foster further emphasized that “archival artists seek to make [visible] historical information, often lost or displaced, physically present” through the archive. German philosopher Walter Benjamin suggests that the archive is not simply a repository of historical facts, but also a site of cultural memory. Undoubtedly, the archive is defined by the past, represented in the present and anticipates the future. In a similar manner, as we move into the future at lightning speed aided by technology, our obsession and need to engage with the past in the form of the archive only grows stronger. The exhibition also engages the counter-narrative of the “anarchives,” referencing historical material that is unrecorded.

The nine contemporary artists in the exhibition – Anita Dube, Astha Butail, Jitish Kallat, Mithu Sen, Nikhil Chopra, Pushpamala N, Raqs Media Collective, Thukral & Tagra, and Vivan Sundaram – reflect on the archive (as an entity and their own practice) from different perspectives – as a site of resistance, that not only disseminates knowledge, which allows them to subvert and critique dominant narratives and power structures, not as static entities, but those that are in a constant state of flux. Raq Media Collective reflects on an earlier work, while Jitish Kallat and Vivan Sundaram distort time by fusing the past into the future; Mithu Sen and Pushpamala N ask the viewer to consider the case of an archive that is deliberately hidden, and the efforts of protest and resistance it takes to bring such works back into the public consciousness; Anita Dube and Thukral and Tagra prompt us to deal with the volume of information an archive holds – what should be retained or excluded/censored? And finally, Astha Butail and Nikhil Chopra probe the idea of an anarchive through oral traditions and performance-based work.

The archive is thus not just a repository of the past, instead, it challenges us to rethink and reimagine the role it can play in shaping cultural memory and history of the future.

Date

3 Feb - 31 Mar 2023

Artists

Anita Dube, Astha Butail, Jitish Kallat, Mithu Sen, Nikhil Chopra, Pushpamala N, Raqs Media Collective, Thukral & Tagra, Vivan Sundaram