Soap of the Sages, Sun of the Sea is how Pythagoras referred to salt. This show brings together three works across different media, revealing the disappearance of water bodies and the appearance of salt–a fortuneteller, a mineral mystic–in their wake.
Longing traces the disappearance of the Aral Sea, the lake on the border of Uzbekistan and Kazakhastan, whose heart-shaped body now remains a dry echo, the presence of an absence. Drawn from satellite imagery from 1960 to 2024, the series resembles a data set, grading from deep blue to hues of salt, moss, and fungal blooms. Woven in Ikat, the ancient technology of the loom and the futuristic technology of satellite data interlock. Ikat, inherently appearing pixelated, begins to glitch. The repetition of the image becomes a siren—a gesture of longing stretched across time, from when the lake was moist and bulbous to its current state, dry and saline. The final pattern, in which the water has depleted almost entirely, is left on the loom, as if the weave itself has unraveled.
I and Thou, a diptych of collages on aluminium, is at once a microcosm and an aerial view of salt pans, illuminating the toxic pleasure of our postnatural world.
Namak Nazar constitutes a sonic backdrop, telling the story of an erotic, etheric element: ‘So’, a non-binary, in-between particle, a perfect acid and base that spells the doom of climate change and offers redemption by looking inward. The soundscape comprises percussion instruments made with salt and sufi songs recorded in the Rann of Kutch, the desert on the border of India and Pakistan. It becomes a carrier of prayer, warding off evil, connecting the past to the future, the sea to the desert, the being to the becoming.