a language where yesterday and tomorrow are the same word. Kal
fragments from a collective archive
organized by Aziz Sohail
On view at Twelve Gates Arts
Friday, May 6th - Saturday, June 18th, 2022
Opening reception with curator, Friday, May 6, 5:30 - 8 PM
with Arshia Fatima Haq, Ayesha Chaudhry, Chathuri Nissansala, Fiza Khatri, kal RITUALS, kal FICTIONS, Tehreem Mela, The Many Headed Hydra, Sa’dia Rehman, Sabeen Omar, Sophia-Layla Afsar, radio kal, Vasi Samudra Devi, Veenadari Lakshika and Vicky Shahjehan
a language where yesterday and tomorrow are the same word. Kal was co-initiated by Aziz Sohail and The Many Headed Hydra in 2020. kal is curated and cared for collectively by Aziz Sohail, Fiza Khatri, Sandev Handy, The Many Headed Hydra, Promona Sengupta, Zahabia Khozema, Sakina Aliakbar, Arun Welandawe-Prematilleke, Momina Masood, and the teams of District*School Without Center, Archive Books and Zubaan Books.
fragments from a collective archive is organized by Aziz Sohail.
Twelve Gates Arts is pleased to present a language where yesterday and tomorrow are the same word. Kal (kal) a retrospective of works produced by the eponymous trans*oceanic platform. kal traces decolonial and feminist futures and pasts that are connected through bodies of water lapping at different shorelines. kal brings together artists, writers, organizers and makers from South Asia, the South Asian diasporas and post-/migrant Europe. A queer feminist and decolonial infrastructure for transdiciplinary and collaborative art practices & alternative pedagogies, kal manifests online and in situ through Houses (spaces of togetherness, making, learning and rest) in Colombo, Karachi, and Berlin, a radio channel and a series of publications.
The title takes inspiration from Fatimah Asghar’s poetic invocation of the Hindi-Urdu word کل. Expressing a time beyond the here and now, the meaning of ‘kal’ moves fluidly and shifts its meaning based on who speaks, from where and when. Thinking of the body as a site of memory and of speculation, kal looks towards forgotten and imagined ways of living and dying together on earth that disrupt binary contours of time or being. kal unfolds in trans*territorial alliances and queer world building in extended pandemic time and amidst deep ecological and social transformations.
The exhibition presents a collective body of textual, film, and audio works to construct decolonial, futurist, feminist, queer and trans* imaginations that interrogate and counter racism, Islamophobia and fascism. The collective prioritizes slow, performative interventions and poetic strategies, cultivating life-ecologies after patriarchy and colonialism, capitalism and gender that look to the future while also honoring ways of life that predate these systems. This body of work is not a somber act of disruption, but one driven by queer and trans joy, self-love, and fulfillment. Works on view include excerpts from kal publications, soundscapes that have aired on the DIY radio kal channel, as well as filmic and visual installations.
About kal and the Curators:
a language where yesterday and tomorrow are the same word. kal is a collaboration with Archive Books, District*School Without Center, Zubaan Books, Goethe Institut Sri Lanka, Goethe Institut Pakistan, COCA Collective Colombo, IVS Gallery Karachi, and Colomboscope; supported by the Department for Culture and Europe in the Berlin Senate, Goethe Institut South Asia, the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, and ifa. For more information visit yesterdaytomorrow.space
Aziz Sohail is an art curator, writer and researcher whose work is focused on building interdisciplinary connections and supporting new cultural and pedagogical infrastructures. His current research is a meditation on the longue-duree intersections of sexuality and colonialism with migration, law and identity through the work of practitioners who navigate empire(s) and its afterlives.
The Many Headed Hydra (TMHH) interweave queer, feminist, and decolonial forms of artistic, research, and publishing practice with a focus on ecologies, myths, and situated practices emerging from water bodies.
About Twelve Gates Arts
Founded in 2011, Twelve Gates Arts (Twelve Gates, 12G) is an art gallery that uplifts South & West Asian diasporic artistic production within Philadelphia’s cultural ecosystem. 12G programming focuses on an emerging art landscape that maps the cultures of migration, inclusive of the systems that influence it: race, gender, creed, empire, and economy. A nod to the archetypal fortified walls that surround medieval cities worldwide, our namesake underlies our exhibitions and public events, which celebrate the melange of cultural identity that foments as peoples move and settle.
12G believes in the unique ability of visual art to give shape to alternative, more just realities and epistemologies. The artists we work with combine traditional, contemporary, and ‘folk’ art mediums in innovative ways, and in turn visualize new perspectives of the world around us, and of one another. Exhibitions like Kal are transformative because they present work that challenges historical narratives of South Asian culture and community. Artists provide the portal, 12G is the platform, and our audience incites the dialogue that completes a transformation of the narrative, making room for erased experiences within the US, the diaspora, and beyond.