Ancestors from another world
21 Feb 2022

Written by Tanishka D'lima

A show at Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation lets viewers step into a fictional post-human future world to examine their own existence.

We are a storytelling civilisation where oral or written narratives, or those formed through artefacts left behind, communicate the collective memories of a people.  And so in Sahej Rahal’s Ancestors, storytelling takes various shapes, becoming an integral part of the artist’s world. The museum walls of the exhibition take on the skin of an archaeological tomb site. When you enter, you encounter fictionalised excavated relics of an imagined world. As you progress, you move through the archive of artefacts from terracotta installations, through ink paintings and texts, and finally an interactive AI programme. Puja Vaish, curator of the exhibition, says, “[The museum] becomes a site for building stories that describe the world, its inhabitants and its belief systems, through a consideration of the ecological, human and digital imprints that are left behind.”

Read the full article here