Growing Like a Tree: Sent a Letter
Ishara Art Foundation in partnership with Sunaparanta Goa Centre For The Arts presents Growing Like A Tree: Sent A Letter, a curatorial debut by Bunu Dhungana and Sadia Marium Rupa.
The exhibition marks the third iteration of the show initially curated by artist Sohrab Hura at Ishara in 2021. It brings together new and previously presented works reflecting the complex and imbricated histories of South Asia and beyond. Comprising of photography, artist-books, texts, films, video and sound installations, the curation pushes the boundaries of contemporary image-making as modes of address that offer a changing map of interconnected practices in the region.
The title of the exhibition draws from Dayanita Singh’s work Sent A Letter (2007) that was exhibited as a citation in the first iteration of the show. Expanding on the idea that an unopened photo-book can enfold within it diaries, exhibitions and correspondences, Growing Like A Tree: Sent A Letter returns to this source to evoke the tactile act of composing letters. It gathers images and sounds as dispatches from artistic journeys across different contexts, highlighting the shared moments of nurture, growth, decay, pollination and memory-making.
The ensemble of artists and collectives in the exhibition includes Aishwarya Arumbakkam, Vinita Barretto, Uma Bista, Dolly Devi, Shaheen Dill-Riaz, Pooja Gurung & Bibhusan Basnet, Alana Hunt, Ipshita Maitra, Farah Mulla, Nida Mehboob, Jaisingh Nageswaran, Ali Monis Naqvi, Gaurang Naik, Sarker Protick, Sathish Kumar, The Packet, Priyadarshini Ravichandran, Rajee Samarasinghe, Suneil Sanzgiri, Sylvia Schedelbauer, Prasiit Sthapit, Maryam Tafakory, Avani Tanya and Zainab, along with a citation of Dayanita Singh’s Sent A Letter. With site-specific notations by Sohrab Hura, his role as a curator tunes out with the third iteration inviting new curatorial voices that proliferate the growing of the tree into a forest.
Links: Ishara Art Foundation
Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts
Growing Like A Tree essay by Sohrab Hura
Exhibition documentation: all photos by Sohrab Hura
