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Podcast: EMPIRE LINES
Episode: The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975-1998 (EMPIRE LINES x Barbican, with Shanay Jhaveri, Anita Dube, and Nalini Malani) (2024)
Description: Contemporary artists Nalini Malani and Anita Dube, and curator Shanay Jhaveri, journey through two decades of cultural and political change in South Asia, from Indira Gandhi’s declaration of the State of Emergency in 1975, to the Pokhran Nuclear Tests in 1998, in the 2024 exhibition, The Imaginary Institution of India.
Titled after Sudipta Kaviraj’s 1991 text, this landmark group exhibition in London explores the ways artists articulated this period of transitions. Beyond the focus on the moment of independence and Partition of British India in 1947 - often reflecting Western/European-centric interests in South Asia - the works consider the chal...