Curated by Dr. Arshiya Lokhandwala Gallery 1 x 1, Dubai

Anita Dube, Chitravanu Mazumdar, Mithu Sen, Sheba Chachi, Susanta Mandal

Curatorial Note:

“The wound is the place where the light enters you.”

- Rumi

The exhibition Phantasmagoria borrows its title from Walter Benjamin’s seminal work the Arcades Project, that alludes to the 18th century rear projected light display—famously known as the magic lantern—that project larger than life images as menacing specters that haunt us with their shadowy images. In a similar manner, the artist in this show use light as a source to reveal the current horrors that plague our society. Today, we can say, the world around us isnothing short of phantasmagoric as the horrors of war, ecological devastation, and inequality in gender, caste and class and religious conflict play out in real time. So what lies ahead? How can we reconcile these issues? The five artists shine light on a few possibilities.