'The Land Sings Back'

During the opening week of 'The Land Sings Back', a two-day workshop will be held to critically discuss issues concerning the oceanic geographies, histories and futures.

A workshop hosted by the Centre for the Study of South Asia brought together a geographically diffuse network of artists, scholars, gallery professionals and art historians to discuss issues of decolonial ecology. The funding meant three of the exhibiting artists from South Asia were able to visit the UK to participate in the workshop and exhibition. 

The workshop complemented a public lecture in The Paul Mellon Centre and a new art exhibition at Drawing Room in Bermondsey. 

The 'Land Sings Back' exhibition aimed to reimagine our relationship to the planet through the work of thirteen artists with ancestries across South Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. Engaging with these cultural vocabularies through a lens of environmental justice, the exhibition approaches drawing as an active agent of social history, Indigenous knowledge and ecofeminist philosophy, rather than as a tool of illustration, classification and conquest. The public and discourse programme was produced in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of South Asia and the Indian Ocean World & The Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London and with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

Image credit: iStock