4D MFA student Anamika Singh’s qualifier exhibition ‘Opaque Waters & Brutal Suns’ was on view from March 11-16th in the Backspace Gallery in the Art Lofts building at UW Madison.
‘Opaque Waters & Brutal Suns (Hydrogenesis)’ is a story of many stories. Of beginnings that are endings, and endings that are beginnings. This work engages with the confluence of migration, violent histories, and liquid extractions and flows. Indexing field research from along the Suriname River and the Awadh Plains, the work oscillates between the past and present of these two places. This project takes us to the ports & and paths of this once-historic migratory route to confront how colonial inheritances continue to shape us. Ruminating on water bodies, contested histories, and unruly ‘development’, this project examines how paradigms of colonial violence reemerge in new forms within Faizabad and Paramaribo. Opaque Waters & Brutal Suns maps a constellation of transcontinental histories across three centuries by returning to sites that entangle these two places and their histories.
Anamika Singh (b. 1995 in India, lives and works between New York and Madison) is a visual artist and graphic designer. Singh’s work contends with the intersection of carceral structures, museology and governance to consider how soft power intersects with necropower.
Singh has been a recipient of the Benjamin Menschel Fellowship, Ashkal Alwan HWP Fellowship and Futuress Design Fellowship. Her work has been screened at the South Asia Institute Chicago, Fracto Film Festival in Berlin and Angkor Photo Festival in Siem Reap, and Art Lit Lab in Madison. Singh has been a visiting professor at Rutgers University-Newark, guest lecturer at the Architectural Association, London and a guest critic at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York.
You can view the film that was displayed in the installation below.
To view a preview of Singh’s book that was on display during the exhibition, check out her website.