Scripted Selves: Sutures of Signs and Symbols

GROUP SHOW

Jan 24, 2024 - Feb 29, 2024

Scripted Selves: Sutures of Signs and Symbols

Curated By Manan Shah

The sutures visible across the lineage of signs and symbols presented on the performative body bear the traces of scripts imbricated on the scales of skin. Akin to the subtle textures of linen, the body in the photographs seems to move and sway, as though exercising its agency in the form of (un) folding, (dis) entangling and (mis) appropriating. Invoking distorted points of view and utilizing grainy textures, analogue photography, in the hands of Yazdani, serves as a metaphor to extend the layers of the body. In other words, it is a method to destabilise the conventional idea of a photograph as a truthful representation of a sliver of reality. The monochromatic effect of the photograph, expounded by the hypnotic play of light and shadow, undermines the political exigency that establishes a point of ontology vis-à-vis the body. The immateriality of the body, in terms of the deft economy of imperceptibility, is antithetical to the supremacist claims on material reality of the body.

Akin to the subtle textures of linen, the body in the photographs seems to move and sway, as though exercising its agency in the form of (un) folding, (dis) entangling and (mis) appropriating. Invoking distorted points of view and utilizing grainy textures, analogue photography, in the hands of Yazdani, serves as a metaphor to extend the layers of the body. In other words, it is a method to destabilise the conventional idea of a photograph as a truthful representation of a sliver of reality. The monochromatic effect of the photograph, expounded by the hypnotic play of light and shadow, undermines the political exigency that establishes a point of ontology vis-à-vis the body. The immateriality of the body, in terms of the deft economy of imperceptibility, is antithetical to the supremacist claims on material reality of the body.

The introspection fraught within the sutures of signs and symbols envisions a scope of solidarity and justice through the act of remembering. In the current times determined by a constant urge for visual stimulation, the camera, as the observant eye of Yazdani, addresses the streams of fragmented memory. The uniqueness of the photographs rests with the desire of Yazdani to revisit the events of the body as a site of history and injustice in a visual taxonomy that creates the journey of articulating a constant struggle for resilience. Scripted Selves: Sutures of Signs and Symbols opens the possibility of an avenue removed from the logic of systematic order to draw on the agency of body in the face of past (in) actions and a contemporary effort to blur the dichotomy of us versus them.

– Exhibition Text By Dilpreet Bhullar

CURATORIAL NOTE

Under the orchestrated settings of the private spaces, the photographic works by Zahra Yazdini in the exhibition probes the human body through the effect of distortion and layers. The asymmetry reimagines the points of location and registration of the dominant scripts to let the human body have its agency. The curatorial approach takes into account the scale of the photographs in order to cajole the viewer to pause and ponder: remap the body as through the eye of an active assimilator and associate. To break the monotony of the space, an eclectic visual appeal anchored by the encases and organic drapes, accentuates a porous experience to see the set of photographs in its entirety and individually. The curatorial approach strategically attempts to divide the space through drapes – evoking a psychological bifurcation or an in-between space – synonymous with the traces of lamina of a body. Towards this end, the exhibition succinctly takes references from a book produced by the artist. Yet is attentive to avoid a similar iteration through the display.

– Manan Shah