Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Lister Park hosted the Turner Prize last year, and has been closed since the exhibition ended last month.
It re-opens its doors this weekend, and one of the new exhibitions will be (Un)Layering the Future Past of South Asia: Young Artists’ Voices.
The group exhibition is bringing together 12 contemporary artists from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The exhibition opens on Friday, March 27 and runs until August 31.
An exhibition of contemporary South Asian artists opens at Bradford’s Cartwright Hall Art Gallery this March. Joint Curator Manmeet K Walia is projected onto by the digital artwork of Moonis Ahmad about infrastructures of erasure (Image: T&A)
First shown at SOAS Gallery, London last Spring, this new iteration has been developed for Bradford and is curated by artist Salima Hashmi and curator Manmeet K Walia. The exhibition spotlights a new generation of artists whose work reflects on shared histories across South Asia and beyond.
Pieces include textile, embroidery, collage, film, video projection, and mixed media, and through the works the artists address urgent contemporary concerns including ecological stress, depletion of indigenous resources, forced migration, gender disparity, political imbalance and the enduring legacies of Empire.
An exhibition of contemporary South Asian artists opens at Bradford’s Cartwright Hall Art Gallery this March. Featuring work by Varunika Saraf with detailed embroidery with shared stories of Struggle and Resistance (Image: T&A)
Artists such as Varunika Saraf, Hema Shironi, Maheen Kazim and T. Vinojya draw on embroidery and weaving traditions, reworking materials often associated with domestic labour into forms of feminist inquiry and cultural memory. Purvai Rai’s large-scale embroidered panels are framed with basmati rice, and reflect agricultural depletion.
Moonis Ahmad’s digital film explores militarisation and surveillance, while Rinoshan Susiman reflects on growing up amid conflict in Sri Lanka.
An exhibition of contemporary South Asian artists opens at Bradford’s Cartwright Hall Art Gallery this March. viewing the digital work of Hadi Rahnaward of an all male competition to become the center of the frame (Image: T&A)
Hadi Rahnaward’s projected work Tilatilaa draws from Afghanistan’s political history to consider spectacle, power and instability.
Curators Salima Hashmi and Manmeet K Walia said “This is the first time that young artists from across South Asia are being seen together in a single exhibition in Bradford.
“As curators, we are curious about how audiences will respond to these new practices, which demonstrate life as it is lived today across South Asia, from Afghanistan to Bangladesh. The works are lively, bringing fresh ideas and exploring new mediums. It is not just a celebration, but also a way of sharing stories that have been waiting to be narrated. The exhibition, which is travelling from London, holds space for understanding the region in its entirety, while celebrating its interconnected languages and cultures.”