Artist Ashima Dhir Sehgal's solo show traces of memory in historic spaces

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Artist Ashima Dhir Sehgal works with textile, photography, sculpture and installation in her ongoing solo show that explores historic venues in India and invites one to imagine the lives that once occupied the structures.

“What Was Here?”, running at Bikaner House’s LTC Gallery, was developed through conversations with Lekha Poddar, founder of the Devi Art Foundation, with curatorial guidance from Pooja Sood, director of Khoj International Artists’ Association.

The exhibition explores what remains after human presence has disappeared, and whether places, objects and materials can hold traces of the lives, gestures and moments they have witnessed.

“I create because I am drawn to what time leaves behind – the marks, memories and silences held within ordinary things. Through my work, I try to make these invisible traces felt again,” Sehgal said in a statement.

More than documenting the historic structures, the exhibition invokes one to to look at them differently, to imagine the lives that once occupied them and to consider what might remain after they are gone.

“This enquiry unfolds as a visual journey. The works begin with recognisable architectural imagery and become increasingly layered, obscured and fragmented as viewers move through the exhibition. Thread enters the image, representation loosens and material takes over. Many of the works extend beyond the picture plane, taking on a three-dimensional form that allows the materials, textures and layers to physically occupy space,” the organisers said in a statement.

Sehgal works with silk organza, discarded threads, cocoons, ash, remnants of ritual, charcoal and ink not simply to depict memory, “but to explore its instability”.

The works emerge through processes of layering, stitching, staining, burning, perforating, abrading and unravelling.

The exhibition culminates in a house installation that is not a reconstruction of a particular building but a space where elements that have disappeared throughout the show gather in another form.

The exhibition comes to a close on October 11.

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