Three years in the making, the exhibition (Un)layering the Future Past of South Asia: Young Artists’ Voices brings together 26 artists, hailing from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, selected after close to a hundred studio visits made by the curators Salima Hashmi and Manmeet K. Walia. Held at the Brunei gallery at SOAS, London, the exhibition presents unique perspectives on contemporary concerns that plague the subcontinent, examining its historical legacies of Empire.
With the exception of temporary relocation for political or personal reasons, all 26 artists have lived in and share familial roots with the region. These associations shape the sense of care, consideration and pride evident in the artworks and the curation. Running across the show to tie together different displays are four thematic threads -- “Textile as Contemporary Practice,” “The Disappearing Landscape,” “Shared Histories, Collective Memories” and “Surviving Conflict/Dreams of Peace.” For a visitor seeking a traditional exhibition experience, the lack of clear sections can be confusing. However, the choice of a dynamic design across three floors feels truer to the landscape of South Asia, where boundaries have historically been fluid, influenced by changing politics, economic factors and ecological shifts. Moving through the show may then feel like an encounter with a Venn diagram of cultural and creative ingenuity.
At the start of the exhibition, visitors encounter “Whisper” (2021), an arresting sound piece by Nepalese artist Amrit Karki. The bright blue tapered directional speaker insists that one leans in to hear the word “Listen” spoken by the artist in 50 different languages, his tone growing in urgency as it plays on a continuous loop.
While “Whisper” encompasses different regions and cultures through linguistic registers, Hadi Rahnaward’s “Fragile Balance” (2023), a mixed media installation made primarily of matches, speaks to any or all four thematic tropes behind the show. Profoundly influenced by socio-political changes in his homeland Afghanistan, Rahnaward explores issues like displaced values, captivity and the impact of propaganda, drawing on personal and collective narratives. His journey into art began with childhood memories of conflict, watching his uncle sketch battles between Mujahideen fighters and the Soviet army in the late 1980s. A bird's eye view reveals that the matches (some burnt, some with painted tips) have been painstakingly arranged to resemble a rug. This connects with the history of rugs in Afghanistan, which symbolize the country’s nomadic heritage and regional identity. Afghan rugs are renowned for their distinct craftsmanship, designs and symbolic patterns. Ancient nomadic tribes wove rugs for practical use, as well as for cultural and ceremonial purposes. Afghanistan’s position along the Silk Road also helped it absorb influences from Persia, Central Asia and India, which shaped its rug styles and techniques. Interestingly, after the Soviet invasion in 1979, Afghan weavers began incorporating modern imagery into their rugs, like tanks, guns and maps, creating a new genre known as “war rugs.” These objects became political art pieces and are now sought-after collectibles. In Kabul, where Rahnaward grew up, rugs remain a core part of home decor and culture. Even in urban apartments, rugs are laid out for guests, prayer or sleeping, and reflect the deep-rooted Afghan customs of hospitality and beauty. By creating a traditional rug out of matches, Rahnaward alludes to the fragility of his homeland and the potential for it to go up in flames at any time.
Commissioned specially for the show is a piece by another Afghan artist, Sher Ali, titled “Screen Weaves II” (2024), made in collaboration with women embroiderers from Kabul. This installation mimics the shields on windows used to protect homes against insects and inclement weather. Visitors who enter the installation may gain a sense of what it feels like to be targeted. However, the threads of resilience also weave a cave of serenity within a world filled with chaos.
Textiles reflect more fractured political states in Sri Lankan artist Hema Shironi’s beautiful and delicate pieces from a series called “Pack Your Belonging, Leaving Soon” (2024). When moving through the show at pace, this work could easily be dismissed as scraps of sari fabric. But a closer look reveals the intricacy of Shironi’s embroidery, which depict images of displacement and migration in the context of colonization and civil war in her homeland.
A bolder stance is portrayed in Varunika Saraf’s “The Longest Revolution II” (2024), where an incredibly detailed embroidered banner presents a modern history of women’s protest in India. Saraf celebrates a feminist tradition of making, thinking and doing, centring women as agents of socio-political change.
On the lower ground floor, the curators display a number of film and video installations. In a secluded corner under the stairs, we encounter Leeko (2024) by Aiman Amin, highlighting traditional songs performed by elderly Baloch women (an Iranian ethnic group primarily residing in Balochistan, which spans parts of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan) during weddings or in remembrance of loved ones. These songs serve as powerful metaphors for how they navigate the hardships of life, political challenges and various losses, transforming their experiences into poetic expressions. The bright turquoise salwar kameez of the film’s protagonist contrasts beautifully against the stark white worn built environment. Even though it appears as a calm neutral space in the film, the harsh reality is that this village has been a site of genocide, where male members of the community no longer exist. In this environment though, the work addresses women’s strength, self-sufficiency, humility and communal ownership, reflecting modern feminist definitions within traditional Baloch value systems.
In a three-channel video work titled Link Road (2021-2022), Palash Bhattacharjee turns to Bangladesh to unearth personal ties amidst communal history and intersecting political narratives. Bhattacharjee explores his spoken dialect, formed at the confluence of various currents on the river Karnaphuli, which flows through Chattogram (Chittagong). Within the boundedness of the local language and the river unfold efforts to envision existences that are near and remote, marginal and unknown, relying on remembered fragments and detached assertions from the artist’s perspectives as a child. The work is influenced by familial and friendship bonds nurtured in marginal, coastal regions along the India-Myanmar border. This absorbing, poetic work deserves to travel further within the global biennale circuit in the near future.
A poignant takeaway from the show was Ayesha Sultana’s Pools (2024). This visually stunningpiecerevolvesaround the interplay of light, materiality and spatial perception through glass as a primary medium. It is inspired by the meditative quality of water, its capacity to hold and reflect light, and its metaphorical and layered associations with memory, the body and liminality. Using hand-blown glass, each part of the piece is unique and tries to capture a moment of fluidity frozen in time, while engaging with notions of material presence and void. It can simultaneously be read as early morning dew, signifying a new beginning, tears for what has been and continues to be lost, and the sweat that comes from the hard work of rebuilding. All acts that the artists in this show and so many others from South Asia are undertaking on a daily basis.
(Un)layering the Future Past of South Asia: Young Artists’ Voices is on at SOAS, London, from April 11 to June 21, 2025.
Shasti Lowton is a Curator for the UK’s Government Art Collection, which she develops as a tool for cultural diplomacy through acquisitions, commissions and artistic programming.