Babur Ki Gai: A walkthrough with Priyanshi Saxena

This exhibition examines the oxymoron of ‘contemporary history’ through the phenomenon of mythopoesis commonly understood as the power of myths to engender or modulate reality. The concept of the ‘contemporary’ as the fleeting ‘nowness’ is at odds with history taken to mean the documented past. Like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the instant the duration of the contemporary is registered, it seizes to be of the present and passes into the domain of the past. On the other hand, mythical thinking appears to operate from the vanishing point of an unspecified past, if not the pre-historic, from where it continues to guide the present. Its hold and influence is partly due to the patina of seemingly incontrovertible timelessness and veracity acquired through the repeated practice of collective belief over an extended period of time. Whilst the hauntology or the point of origination of myths is subject to uncertainty, their teleology remains firmly rooted in the present such that old myths are periodically revived and refitted to the demands of the contemporary. One way to create contemporary mythologies then is through speculation, a prognosis of the moment that is to unfold in the near future or is the projected outcome of a present continuous.