ART CITIES:London-Amar Kanwar
Amar Kanwar is an artist shaped by a commitment to social activism. Born in New Delhi where he lives, he works strictly with documentary and archival images in the process of documentary filmmaking, employing various methods of editing and presentation to create a sense of atmosphere and reveal underlying motives and histories.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Marian Goodman Gallery Archive
The work of Amar Kanwar is on presentation at Marian Goodman Gallery in a solo exhibition entitled “Such A Morning”. Originally presented at Documenta 14, the film “Such A Morning”, navigates transitions between juxtaposing states of minds, with each character seeking the truth through phantom visions from within the depths of the darkness. Shot in India, the film follows the mysterious disappearance of a famous mathematics professor. We watch the professor, at the peak of his career, sequester himself into physical darkness as he begins to slowly lose his eyesight. He retreats to an abandoned train carriage and turns it into a home, transforming it into a place of solitude, thought and metamorphosis. As he becomes acclimatized to the dark, the professor experiences a series of hallucinations and epiphanies about his life and his world that he documents as “Almanac of the Dark”. While Amar Kanwar was studying history at the University of Delhi, two events occurred that impacted his subsequent philosophical and artistic development. On 31/10/83, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by Sikh bodyguards, resulting in mass retaliatory violence against Sikhs in Delhi. Then, on 3/12/84, a toxic gas leak at the Union Carbide pesticide plant, known as the Bhopal disaster, killed thousands of people and exposed hundreds of thousands more. These pivotal experiences instilled in Kanwar a commitment to social activism. Enrolling in the film school at the Mass Communications Research Center of Jamia Millia Islamia University, Delhi, he began to work on pushing the poetic limits of documentary filmmaking. He later expanded his practice to multi-channel video installation, adding other audiovisual elements.
Info: Marian Goodman Gallery, 5-8 Lower John Street, London, Duration: 19/9-14/10/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.mariangoodman.com
