“The sky held it, the earth remembered” in Dubai looks at how land, water, and the cosmos function as living archives of memory and history. Using various mediums, the exhibition suggests the environment retains material traces of ecological change, preserving them across deep time.
It engages with contemporary critiques of the Anthropocene, rejecting a human-centred vision of the world in favour of the view that people and non-human forces are irrevocably intertwined. The earth embodies the effects of environmental destruction and infrastructural violence, rather than being a passive witness to history.
Traces of Ecological Change
These traces are inscribed on the environment as residues and stratified layers that often elude human perception. Dense urban infrastructure belies the vegetation that preceded it, and which now fills only liminal spaces. The banks of the Indus River, erased by flooding, turn into brushstrokes on a mural painted from memory.
Celestial phenomena become repositories of information invisible to the naked eye. In Shahana Rajani’s “Lines That World a River”, the Indus emerges as a site of extraction, erasure, and contested memory. The three-channel film traces the experiences of displaced communities of the delta who create murals and paintings to reconstruct and memorialise their ancestral villages.
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Artistic Representations
Rohini Devasher’s “Latent Fields” consists of three monumental habotai silk panels suspended from the ceiling, each measuring 3 x 5.5 metres. The works are emblazoned with images inspired by sun spots and other solar phenomena, shifting in scale from the microscopic to the atmospheric.
Devasher plays the role of artist-as-astronomer, harnessing her research during past residencies at scientific institutes such as CERN. To create the images in “Latent Fields”, she draws on specialised technologies used to observe distant stars and subatomic particles.
Ecological Ruin and Personal Loss
A selection from Sarker Protick’s “Dhaka 1217”, a recent series of 135 black-and-white photographs, is displayed at Ishara. The complete body of work forms the basis of a forthcoming book of the same title. Captured between 2011 and 2026, the works document the transformation of a one-square-mile radius around the neighbourhood where the artist was born and continues to live.
Ecological ruin intermingles with personal loss in these works. Fallen hair gathers on the floor, a woman gazes from an old photograph in a stained envelope, and a stack of books collects dust. Demonstrators of the 2024 Monsoon Revolution come together, protesting lost livelihoods.
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Bringing together perspectives from Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh, “The sky held it, the earth remembered” foregrounds shared experiences of ecological decline, revealing how rivers, environments, and skies testify to changes that transcend national borders. The exhibition invites sustained and close attentiveness to subtle traces that narrate stories of both dispossession and resilience.
Artworks for “The sky held it, the earth remembered” have been loaned from Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco and Shrine Empire, New Delhi. The Han Nefkens Foundation – South Asian Video Art Production Grant 2023 is presented in partnership with Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai; Nottingham Contemporary; Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo; Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp; and Para Site, Hong Kong.
It showcases the work of artists who are exploring the impact of ecological change on their communities and the world at large. By bringing together these perspectives, the exhibition provides a unique insight into the shared experiences of ecological decline and the resilience of communities in the face of adversity.