​​Until you 206

An installation that records the (un)manifested nature of Communal violence in India’s post-Independence history

Medium: 56 uncolored happy prick drawings, Zarina, metallic paper, watercolor ink, eco-anxiety, violence, mass graveyards, and lynching tools on acidfree handmade paper and a QR code, Size: variable 15ft x 7 ft , Year: (1947 - to be cont.) 2021/22

The simplicity of Mithu Sen’s mark making belies the intensity of her work, Until you 206, 2021-2022. With a pinpoint she pierces paper to form a suite of images that itemise the human skeleton. In Sen’s idiosyncratic anatomical diagrams bones are shown shattered, hands are bloodied and each body part is labelled with a date. The dates reference a timeline, accessible via QR code, which records outbursts of violence in India’s post-Independence history. It is not that Sen consigns these incidents to the past; she deploys them as part of an incomplete monument that anticipates the persistence of brutality. Bound up in each image is therefore pain and premonition suffused with acute anxiety.

By Cleo Roberts