Originally commissioned for Sharjah Biennial 15, the multi-channel installation Peacock’s Graveyard (2023) weaves together images and sounds that meditate on the transience of existence.
Comprised of a set of projections onto seven screens, the lyrical images in The Peacock’s Graveyard emerge and recede individually and then simultaneously, leading us on an abstract journey. Forming a visual haiku across distinct channels in the exhibition space, these images are overlaid with texts; stories written by Kanwar, that draw upon received narratives and oral histories, blending ancient and modern folklore traditions with personal experience.
Offering a unique vantage point through which to consider collective and individual truths, Kanwar here employs a variety of editing and staging methods which invite viewers to reflect on non-canonical wisdom. In this way, The Peacock’s Graveyard departs from earlier documentary strategies within his work, articulating the need for a metaphysical re-organization of thought from which it is possible to glimpse another world. Kanwar’s work has always operated with the premise that rationality and power cannot and do not exhaust the possibilities of life. Remaining critically engaged with the array of forces on individual lives, the work presents a suite of parables which more obliquely take up questions of responsibility and ethos, dignity and loss.
Of the work, the artist writes that it is “[…] not a lament or mourning, but perhaps a kind of gift, a collection of stories, some ancient, some new, something to keep by one’s side every day, or take along if going someplace, or to help us reconfigure life, ideologies, politics, solidarities, social movements. These stories lay the groundwork for reflecting on our unbearable arrogance, delusions and deep desire for violence.”
Kanwar’s poetic films and video installations have explored the political, social, economic and ecological conditions of our times, often focusing on the Indian subcontinent. His work traces the legacy of globalization and decolonization, land use and border rights, environmental concerns, human rights and free expression; and sexual violence. Interwoven throughout these inquiries are disparate narrative structures which ground his philosophical investigations. Through hybrid installations which incorporate images, literature, poetry and music, Kanwar creates meditative works that do not aim to represent trauma, so much as to find ways through them. How does a landscape comprise beauty and violence; how does poetry stand in for evidence; how do visions within darkness engender light and new pedagogies? Kanwar’s work looks deeply into the causes and effects, and of how they are translated into everyday life and cultural forms.
at Marian Goodman Gallery, New York
until February 24, 2024