New Discoveries: On Himali Singh Soin’s we are opposite like that

Himali Singh Soin’s we are opposite like that (2017–ongoing) is an interdisciplinary work that takes its viewers on an expedition for new discoveries. Starting at the earth’s icy poles, the artist brings together collected stories of humans in relation to land—referencing poetry, geography and aliens as well as false philosophies, love and science. The project comprises videos, sound narratives, performances and most recently a book—published in 2020, with a limited run of 500 copies.

A brown paper cover—held together with a red wax seal—enshrines the canvas-clothed almanac. The spine of the book has a graphic outline of a receding glacier with the blip of a red cross—symbolising exploration errors on a ship’s Global Positioning System (GPS). The pages are strung together with a silver thread that reveals itself every now and then. The thread becomes a visual part of the book’s content as well, as it serves as a physical, dividing line in the poem “Overview Effect.”

The language, visual text, line drawings and diagrams of we are opposite like that dislodge the need for an image. Soin’s text and poems—for example, “Nordic Futurism,” “Thinking like an Island” and “Right Side Up”—remind one of early twentieth-century Imagism, a movement that celebrated experiments with free verse. Imagism considered the visual formation of words to be more important than writing that followed conventional rules. In Soin’s case, doing away with rules is a decolonial act of resistance. Taking on the role of a contemporary Imagist, the artist formats each page in an increasingly illustrative manner. This works towards unsettling the reader, given the otherwise linear book narratives that we are used to. The page numbers—that the viewer-explorer encounters intermittently—offer markers of the journeyed depth to the centre of Soin’s book. Some unexpected formats in the book—apart from missing page numbers—include varying font sizes, shifting margins and realigning axes. The viewer-explorer is also offered a silver space blanket bookmark as a floating piece. With varied content such as recipes, horoscopes, detailed notes and reflections attributed to diverse characters like carrier pigeons, therapists, aliens, astronauts and landscape painters; the bookmark acts as a tool for navigation in this journey.

At a moment in the book, the artist writes, “…understanding Antarctica means understanding the earth.” This aspect references the work’s larger context where the residues of climate change and global warming can be read from signs the poles emit. These include everything from melting glaciers to migratory birds. The foggy text of “On the Reliability of Observation” and the duality of “The Mirage of 1822” play tricks on the eye, as one struggles to fix a line of vision. And just when the explorer thinks that they have arrived at a sense of turning the pages, the book presents itself as a sphere—with either end representing the earth’s poles. The pages appear as strata of land, that move towards the resistant core of the earth (the book’s centre).

Depending on which end the viewer begins reading from, they hit either “The Model Universe” poem and the definition of “Parataxis” or an understanding of a “Lacuna” that follows the appendix “Polar Recipe: Baraf ke Kofte with a Surprise Prune.” It is at this point that the book comes together, only to separate again. The printed translucent paper with geography, hydrography and geometric patterns acts as a gateway. The viewer-explorer can either flip the book over to continue explorations outward to the opposite pole of the book, with backward steps; or exit from this deep dive and begin the journey afresh, back to the centre from the opposite pole of the book—fittingly titled we are opposite like that.

All images from we are opposite like that by Himali Singh Soin. Subcontinentment books, 2020. Supported by India Foundation for the Arts. Images courtesy of the artist.