The two installations directly refer to the way in which the absence of a sense of justice has devastating effects on communities and on nature, creating a sense of defencelessness that the artist reflects in his work.
Amar Kanwar is an Indian artist and filmmaker based in New Delhi whose documentaries and video installations focus on global human rights issues such as nationalism, politics, justice, power, violence and sexual abuse in the Indian subcontinent. His films are complex narratives connecting personal histories with broader social and political processes, associating legends and ritual objects with present-day symbols and events.
Amar Kanwar is an Indian artist and filmmaker based in New Delhi whose documentaries and video installations focus on global human rights issues such as nationalism, politics, justice, power, violence and sexual abuse in the Indian subcontinent. His films are complex narratives connecting personal histories with broader social and political processes, associating legends and ritual objects with present-day symbols and events.
The Sovereign Forest.
The exhibition opens with the core of The Sovereign Forest, The Scene of Crime (2011), a single channel video of 42 minutes that shows the impressive landscapes of Odisha prior to their destruction.
Developed by Kanwar in collaboration with the activist Sudhir Pattnaik and the graphic designer and documentary filmmaker Sherna Dastur, The Sovereign Forest is an ongoing investigative Project initiated in 2011, presented as an archive of films, books, photographs and documents.
The theme of the installation arises from the conflict in Odisha in eastern India between local communities, the government, and business interests over the control of the land, forests, rivers and minerals, which has resulted in the forced displacement of indigenous communities, farmers and fishermen while also generating a climate of violence.
For more than ten years Kanwar has been filming the industrial activity that has changed and destroyed large areas of the land in this Indian state, a process that started in the 1990s, facilitated by the government by the removal of bureaucratic and legal restrictions.
For more than ten years Kanwar has been filming the industrial activity that has changed and destroyed large areas of the land in this Indian state, a process that started in the 1990s, facilitated by the government by the removal of bureaucratic and legal restrictions.
- The core of the installation is occupied by the video The Scene of Crime (2011), where the natural landscape is presented as a crime scene. Almost all the scenes in the film show impressive landscapes whose land has already been acquired and its destiny is to disappear as industrial areas.
- In an adjacent room, the second part of the installation The Seeds Room contains small films projected onto books of hand-made paper on tables, and a wall in which 272 species of rice seeds native to Odisha are exhibited in individual artisan containers. They are the result of knowledge under constant threat of disappearance, shared and developed over decades, compiled by the local farmer Natabar Sarangi. Its objective is to preserve this heritage and to reintroduce it into the natural growing cycles.
Displayed on each of the outside walls of The Seeds Room are three large books that were hand made by Dastur, which are accompanied by projections on their pages and stories written by Kanwar, as well as evidence and evidence in relation to the problems that are reported:
-Counting Sisters and Other Stories (2012)
- The Prediction (1991-2012)
- The Constitution (2012)
- The Prediction (1991-2012)
- The Constitution (2012)
Accompanying the seeds are three small books of reproduced texts and photographs which Kanwar assembled while making The Sovereign Forest. They recount acts of resistance, not just against the political and corporate authorities but also against the idea of forgetting the dead and missing:
-The Seed Book (2012)
- In Memory Of (2012)
- The Lying down Protest (2012)
- In Memory Of (2012)
- The Lying down Protest (2012)
The Lightning Testimonies
- In a separate gallery, the eight-channel installation The Lightning Testimonies (2007) will be presented, a multi-channel work that collects the testimony of several women about sexual violence and kidnapping in India.
Kanwar is positioned in the conflict through voice-overs and first-person commentary, and explores the many ways in which narratives of sexual violence are enmeshed within Indian social and political conflicts with the intention of ending the silence that covers the aggressions against women, in both public and private realms. It includes stories ranging from wide-scale abduction and rape during the partition of India, in 1947, to the powerful anti-rape protests in Manipur, in 2004.
Along with the biographies and personal accounts collected by Kanwar on his travels through India and Bangladesh, there is also space for songs, theatrical performances and poetic images, transporting the viewer beyond the realm of suffering into a space of quiet contemplation, where resilience creates the potential for transformation in a world marked by a continued struggle for women’s rights and dignity. This work was coproduced by TBA21 and Public Press, and premiered in Documenta 12 in 2007.
Kanwar is positioned in the conflict through voice-overs and first-person commentary, and explores the many ways in which narratives of sexual violence are enmeshed within Indian social and political conflicts with the intention of ending the silence that covers the aggressions against women, in both public and private realms. It includes stories ranging from wide-scale abduction and rape during the partition of India, in 1947, to the powerful anti-rape protests in Manipur, in 2004.
Along with the biographies and personal accounts collected by Kanwar on his travels through India and Bangladesh, there is also space for songs, theatrical performances and poetic images, transporting the viewer beyond the realm of suffering into a space of quiet contemplation, where resilience creates the potential for transformation in a world marked by a continued struggle for women’s rights and dignity. This work was coproduced by TBA21 and Public Press, and premiered in Documenta 12 in 2007.
The Sovereign Forest and The Lightning Testimonies is part of an expanding collaboration between the museum and TBA21, founded by Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza, daughter of Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, to present pieces from his collection of contemporary art in Madrid.
