Amar Kanwar
23 Nov 2013 - 23 Mar 2014
AMAR KANWAR
The Sovereign Forest
23 November 2013 - 23 March 2014
“The validity of poetry as evidence in a trial; the discourse on seeing, on understanding, on compassion, on issues of justice; sovereignty and the determination of the self—all come together in a constellation of moving and still images, texts, books, pamphlets, albums, music, objects, seeds, events and processes.” (Amar Kanwar)
Amar Kanwar has been filming the industrial interventions that have reshaped and permanently destroyed parts of the landscape of Odisha for over a decade. Since the 1990s national and international corporations have established large-scale mining and industrial sites in various parts of the traditionally agrarian state. Rich bauxite and iron ore deposits have been transformed into gigantic extraction sites, connected to large-scale infrastructural investments. The resulting conflicts between local communities, the government, and corporations over the control of agricultural lands, forests, rivers, and minerals, have led to the forcible displacement of indigenous communities, farmers and fisherfolk and have engendered an ongoing regimen of violence, oppression, and brutality that is random, unpredictable, disruptive, and invisible.
The Sovereign Forest renders visible and collects evidence of what has hitherto been hidden and suppressed within the site of this “modern war”. Rather than taking a documentary and evidentiary look at the crime as “it is actually happening,” Kanwar orchestrates actual found and collected images, traces, and records into something that surpasses fact, revealing a richer, more fluid and poetic perspective on reality and on “the meaning of what is happening.” Engaging the viewer in manifold ways of “seeing” and comprehending, The Sovereign Forest thus harnesses a set of propositions that investigates the notion of “poetry as evidence.” Poetry carries the ability to express multiple and contingent relationships between violence, memory, and language or, more specifically, to create different vocabularies to express different memories, different faculties of archiving, of telling a story.
The Sovereign Forest is more than an exhibition now; it is a constantly mutating and metamorphosing institution, initiated and supported by several collaborations with artists, activists, journalists and farmers in India. TBA21 has been supporting the artist with The Sovereign Forest since 2010, after having worked closely with Amar Kanwar since 2006 when co-producing The Lightning Testimonies in New Delhi together with Public Press. On this occasion TBA21 also acquired A Night of Prophecy and in 2008, TBA21 and Public Press co-commissioned the artist to produce the 19-channel video installation The Torn First Pages.
The Sovereign Forest
23 November 2013 - 23 March 2014
“The validity of poetry as evidence in a trial; the discourse on seeing, on understanding, on compassion, on issues of justice; sovereignty and the determination of the self—all come together in a constellation of moving and still images, texts, books, pamphlets, albums, music, objects, seeds, events and processes.” (Amar Kanwar)
Amar Kanwar has been filming the industrial interventions that have reshaped and permanently destroyed parts of the landscape of Odisha for over a decade. Since the 1990s national and international corporations have established large-scale mining and industrial sites in various parts of the traditionally agrarian state. Rich bauxite and iron ore deposits have been transformed into gigantic extraction sites, connected to large-scale infrastructural investments. The resulting conflicts between local communities, the government, and corporations over the control of agricultural lands, forests, rivers, and minerals, have led to the forcible displacement of indigenous communities, farmers and fisherfolk and have engendered an ongoing regimen of violence, oppression, and brutality that is random, unpredictable, disruptive, and invisible.
The Sovereign Forest renders visible and collects evidence of what has hitherto been hidden and suppressed within the site of this “modern war”. Rather than taking a documentary and evidentiary look at the crime as “it is actually happening,” Kanwar orchestrates actual found and collected images, traces, and records into something that surpasses fact, revealing a richer, more fluid and poetic perspective on reality and on “the meaning of what is happening.” Engaging the viewer in manifold ways of “seeing” and comprehending, The Sovereign Forest thus harnesses a set of propositions that investigates the notion of “poetry as evidence.” Poetry carries the ability to express multiple and contingent relationships between violence, memory, and language or, more specifically, to create different vocabularies to express different memories, different faculties of archiving, of telling a story.
The Sovereign Forest is more than an exhibition now; it is a constantly mutating and metamorphosing institution, initiated and supported by several collaborations with artists, activists, journalists and farmers in India. TBA21 has been supporting the artist with The Sovereign Forest since 2010, after having worked closely with Amar Kanwar since 2006 when co-producing The Lightning Testimonies in New Delhi together with Public Press. On this occasion TBA21 also acquired A Night of Prophecy and in 2008, TBA21 and Public Press co-commissioned the artist to produce the 19-channel video installation The Torn First Pages.