In an enlightening conversation, Sabih Ahmed, Director of the Ishara Art Foundation, delves into the intricacies and inspirations behind their latest exhibition, “Sheher, Prakriti, Devi.” This exhibition, co-curated with acclaimed artist Gauri Gill, weaves together themes of urbanity, nature, and the divine, creating a tapestry that reflects the multifaceted interactions between these realms. Ahmed shares insights on the collaborative process with Gill, the conceptualization of the exhibition’s core themes, the influence of strategic partnerships, and the careful selection of featured artists. He also reflects on the intended impact of the exhibition on visitors and the broader art community and envisions the future trajectory of such innovative collaborations at Ishara. This interview offers a deeper understanding of how “Sheher, Prakriti, Devi” not only challenges conventional curatorial practices but also expands the boundaries of ecological and artistic discourse.
1) How did the collaborative process between you and Gauri Gill develop for the exhibition Sheher, Prakriti, Devi at Ishara Art Foundation? Can you share any particular challenges or breakthroughs you experienced while curating together?
Sheher, Prakriti, Devi was less of a curatorial collaboration between Gauri Gill and me, than a dialogue. I had followed Gauri’s art practice for several years and was always in admiration of how she navigated different forms of collaboration, from the Fields of Sight series where she collaborated with Warli artist Rajesh Vangad in making photographic drawings since 2013, to an exhibition she conceived in Mumbai in 2021 along with her mother Vinnie Gill and Ladhki Devi. She takes great care in giving due credit to her collaborators, by acknowledging them by name and ensuring they are compensated financially. As she said in a recent talk hosted at Ishara, “Too often, when we say collaboration, we mean co-option.”
I was interested in exploring what a wider canvas would look like if Ishara invited her to curate an exhibition. Because of the power that curation tends to suggest in terms of institutional hierarchy, and for a curator assuming a position where they wield the power to include and exclude, the invitation to Gauri was first met with some reluctance. But as our conversations continued, we were able to put those institutional moorings of the curator aside to look at curating as a practice of bringing practices into conversation. This led to a year-long dialogue between Gauri and myself, but also Gauri with several other artists in South Asia and elsewhere….
2) The exhibition title Sheher, Prakriti, Devi suggests a blend of urban, nature, and divine elements. How did you and Gauri conceptualize these themes, and how do they resonate with the works of artists like Mrinalini Mukherjee and Chiara Camoni?
The exhibition explores the tenuous relationship that exists between the urban environment, the natural environment, and the sacred environment – a relationship that can sometimes be harmonious, and at others violent. This is exemplified by how cities are often planned, with no regard for the habitat of other life forms. Alternatively, we also see how the natural environment finds its space in built structures. We could well say that the relationship is not so much about blending, and instead about being porous. For Gauri, that sense of porosity and an encroachment of boundaries was important when developing this exhibition. These are subjects that Gauri’s art practice is deeply anchored in. Her curation at Ishara is a testament to this commitment.
The relationship between human, organic, and divine is evoked in the installation manuals for Mrinalini Mukherjee’s fabric sculptures, in which, as Gauri writes in her curatorial essay, “hemp and jute transform magically into Devi, Naag, Pakshi, Adi Pushpa and women on peacocks.” In Chiara Camoni’s Tent (2023), similarly, “anthropomorphic figures arise spontaneously through her close communion with nature in the remote rural area in Italy where she lives, and where she walks through the forest each day.”
In both instances, it would be fair to say that while these ideas can have a general and abstract expression, Gauri’s curation gives them very precise and culturally specific undertones. And yet, as with all exhibitions at Ishara, we always aspire to show how particular experiences carry with them diverse possibilities of imagining universal conditions.
3) The exhibition has received support from various organizations like ZEISS Vision and J. Safra Sarasin (Middle East) Ltd. and logistical support from Vadehra Art Gallery. How did these partnerships influence the scope and execution of the exhibition?
At Ishara, we are grateful for the different kinds of support we receive – from artists, institutions, the wider public, partners, and our benefactors. That being said, we have been discerning who we collaborate with and take support from. To that end, we have done our best to affiliate with organizations and entities that share our values about art as a vehicle for enriching cultural conversations and widening horizons. The support from ZEISS Vision, J. Safra Sarasin (Middle East), and Vadehra Art Gallery comes with these shared values. There is mutual trust among our sponsors when it comes to exhibitions, and our curation is never shaped by the scope that patrons impose but rather by the vision of the artists and curators we work with.
4) Could you elaborate on the criteria and process for selecting the artists featured in this exhibition? How do their diverse practices and backgrounds contribute to the overarching narrative of Sheher, Prakriti, Devi?
Sheher, Prakriti, Devi grew out of Gauri’s 2021 eponymous exhibition in Mumbai. Rather than seeing it as a curated show, that exhibition intended to subvert practices of inclusion and exclusion in curation based on accepted notions of who is an artist and whether they have received professional training. Vinnie Gill and Ladhki Devi had not. The show at Ishara extends this idea by inviting other such artists to exhibit their work.
Gauri puts this wonderfully in her curatorial text when she writes, “(e)ach of these artists is someone whose work looks at aspects of the city, of nature, and of the sacred—and the many overlaps between these categories—and whom I have been drawn to for one reason or another. In my view, many of the artists have also received inadequate, if any, attention … They may be lifelong homemakers, who have contributed in other capacities unrecognized as ‘work’, and so, are familiar with forms of exclusion, but whose artistic labor has provided them with profoundly vitalizing spaces of refuge and solace.”
5) What impact do you hope the exhibition Sheher, Prakriti, Devi will have on visitors and the broader art community? Looking forward, how do you envision the future of such collaborative exhibitions at the Ishara Art Foundation?
In my view, Sheher, Prakriti, Devi marks its relevance in at least three ways. Firstly, to consider who we cohabit the world with. And this includes various species of plants and animals, alongside different communities with diverse belief systems. Secondly, the exhibition invites us to expand our definition of ecology from a ‘natural’ environment to an eco-system that comprises of social, historical, technological, natural, and spiritual domains entangled with one another. Lastly, it is an exhibition that speculates the future of art, not merely as a technological narrative of materials and techniques but as a widening field of practices from urban, non-urban, domestic, and spiritual contexts. We could see how whole-heartedly these ideas were received by visitors that comprised of people living in the UAE, as well as those visiting from various parts of the world.
For Ishara, all of our exhibitions attempt to test and develop ideas that artists and curators are exploring. Non-profit foundations such as ours often occupy a unique position in this regard, that is neither a historical museum nor a commercial gallery. This allows us the scope to stage shows that are not yet in the mainstream, and yet seem obvious once they are done.