In Person: Notations on Time with Sabih Ahmed

Currently on view at the Ishara Art Foundation in Dubai, Notations on Time is a group exhibition exploring the philosophical and political dimensions of time through the work of contemporary artists from South Asia and its diaspora. Curated by Sandhini Poddar and Sabih Ahmed, the exhibition stages a dialogue between artistic generations to highlight entanglements between the past, present and future. The exhibition exists as a veritable laboratory of time, exploring art in notational, experimental and fragmentary forms. Standing apart from Western notions of linearity, progress and capitalist domination, Notations on Time explores ontological systems that reveal how artists from the region and its diaspora think about aesthetics, existence, remembrance and futurity.

The exhibition asks questions such as: “What happens when residues from the past are reincarnated into the future? Where does the jurisdiction of the present end? What is the future of the past? What possibilities can the space of an exhibition offer to think through these questions?” Responding to these, Notations on Time includes works by Soumya Sankar Bose, Sheba Chhachhi, Shezad Dawood, Ladhki Devi, Gauri Gill & Rajesh Vangad, Aziz Hazara, Amar Kanwar, Ali Kazim, Mariah Lookman, Haroon Mirza, Anoli Perera, Lala Rukh, Jangarh Singh Shyam, Dayanita Singh, Ayesha Sultana, Jagdish Swaminathan, Chandraguptha Thenuwara and Zarina, accompanied by an infra-vocabulary from Raqs Media Collective’s book Seepage.

Artworks for this exhibition have been loaned from the Ishara Art Foundation and the Prabhakar Collection, the private collections of Taimur Hassan, Lekha & Anupam Poddar and Shweta & Vikram Puri

This exhibition has been supported by Taimur Hassan.

 

Logistical support from Jhaveri Contemporary(Mumbai), Lisson Gallery (London) and Saskia Fernando Gallery(Colombo).

 

In this episode of In Person, Sabih Ahmed walks us through the space, introducing the viewer to the curatorial framework of the exhibition as it explores the different facets of reading time in the twenty-first century.

The exhibition is on view till 20 May 2023 at the Ishara Art Foundation, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai.

(Featured Image: Installation view of Notations on Time at Ishara Art Foundation, 2023. Image courtesy of Ishara Art Foundation and the artists. Photo by Ismail Noor/Seeing Things.)

This video was recorded on 7 March 2023.

To learn more about Sabih Ahmed’s curatorial practice, listen to our podcast episode in which he speaks about collaborative cultural infrastructures.

To learn more about projects exhibited at the Ishara Art Foundation, listen to Anisha Baid in conversation with Aishwarya Arumbakkam, Farah Mulla and the Nepal Picture Library, whose works were displayed as a part of Growing Like a Tree in 2021.

All images courtesy of the artists and the Ishara Art Foundation.