Seeds Have Been Sown, curated by Shaunak Mahbubani for the Prameya Art Foundation at Delhi’s Shrine Empire Gallery, from the 11th  of September to the 24th of October, features artworks that present and contextualise the dissonances experienced by people in different places, positions and locations. Around a dozen artists from India and elsewhere are part of the display.

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India witnessed a growing movement of resistance in late 2019. The movement mushroomed in solidarity against what was perceived as discrimination, the infringement of rights and systemic othering. Covid19 , however, made everyone pause. The movement didn’t pivot online and the pandemic caught us making sense of various global crises, exhausted by the task of distinguishing fact from fiction.  

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The works in the exhibition, part of the curator’s Allies for the Uncertain Futures series, make you ponder about the shared discomfort of people experiencing different unequal realities. Brazilian Pêdra Costa’s de_colon_isation part VI: inbodiesvisibleborders raises questions related to the multivalent body while the Blood Book series by Arshi Irshad Ahmedzai features women struggling with their sexualities.  Photographs index acts of resistance in Aqui Thami’s project documenting the Gorkhaland struggle or Falani’s vignettes of Kabul. While Tehmeena Firdos’s plaster and wire sculptures remind you of ruined buildings Amitesh Grover’s Light Pieces I announces that ‘The first signs of the next shift begin to reveal themselves.’ This begs the ominous question: what are we seeing? More importantly, what are the seeds being sown? And what kind of a harvest can we expect?

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- Sayali Mundye