The NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Art Gallery and Ishara Art Foundation in Dubai will both open solo projects in spring 2020 by Amar Kanwar.

The Ishara Art Foundation, a non-profit institution dedicated to contemporary South Asian art and artists in West Asia, will host Such a Morning (2017) from January 20 to May 20, while The NYUAD Art Gallery, New York University’s academic museum-gallery, will show The Sovereign Forest from January 22 to May 30.

About Such a Morning at Ishara Art Foundation

The film follows an aging mathematics professor who retreats from his career, seeking isolation in an abandoned train carriage. Creating a zone of darkness so as to acclimatize himself before total darkness descends, the professor begins to live in a realm bereft of light.  A parallel story about a woman emerges within the course of the film, providing a compelling, analogous narrative to the protagonist’s. Meanwhile, the professor records his epiphanies and visions in an almanac of the dark, an examination of 49 types of darkness that emerge as a series of letters which are exhibited alongside the film.

About The Sovereign Forest at The NYUAD Art Gallery

The Sovereign Forest is an ongoing multimedia installation that is a creative response to crime, politics, human rights, and ecological crisis. It evolved out of the political and environmental conflict in the resource-rich, and largely tribal Indian state of Odisha. Kanwar has been observing and documenting the industrial interventions that have irrevocably altered Odisha’s landscape for more than a decade. The Sovereign Forest is a long-term commitment of the artist with media activist Sudhir Pattnaik, and designer and filmmaker Sherna Dastur.