The exhibition examines how land, water, and the cosmos serve as living archives of memory and history. Through photography, moving image, and installation, the exhibition proposes that the environment bears the material traces of ecological change, preserving them across deep time.
‘The sky held it, the earth remembered’ engages with contemporary critiques of the Anthropocene, rejecting a human-centred vision of the world in favour of the view that people and non-human forces are irrevocably intertwined. Rather than a passive witness to history, the earth embodies the effects of environmental destruction and infrastructural violence.
These traces are inscribed on the environment as residues and stratified layers that often elude human perception. Dense urban infrastructure belies the vegetation that preceded it, and which now fills only liminal spaces; the banks of the Indus River, erased by flooding, turn into brushstrokes on a mural painted from memory; and celestial phenomena become repositories of information invisible to the naked eye.
In Shahana Rajani’s ‘Lines That World a River’, the Indus emerges as a site of extraction, erasure and contested memory. The three-channel film traces the experiences of displaced communities of the delta who create murals and paintings to reconstruct and memorialise their ancestral villages, submerged underwater due to the building of hydraulic dams and barrages. Depicting clusters of houses, winding creeks, boats and ‘dargahs’ or shrines dedicated to Islamic saints, these artworks become acts of resistance against both ecological destruction and state neglect.
An enclosure evoking a ‘dargah’ – often the only structures that remain standing amid inundated settlements – sits in the centre of the three screens. Creating an intimate space from which to engage with the work as a multisensory experience, the installation evokes both presence and absence. While shrines endure in the delta landscape, they cannot be accessed by those who have been displaced; within the exhibition, however, this void is momentarily filled.
Rohini Devasher’s ‘Latent Fields’ consists of three monumental habotai silk panels suspended from the ceiling, each measuring 3 x 5.5 metres. The works are emblazoned with images inspired by sun spots and other solar phenomena, shifting in scale from the microscopic to the atmospheric, as though taking the viewer through the body of a star. First rendered on paper-thin copper sheets using techniques such as drawing, acid washing, embossing and fumage, these images are then photographed, scanned and digitally printed onto the fabric.
In her practice, Devasher plays the role of artist-as-astronomer, harnessing her research during past residencies at scientific institutes such as CERN. To create the images in ‘Latent Fields’, she draws on specialised technologies used to observe distant stars and subatomic particles. Layered with these luminous forms and delicate tracings, the installation represents the atmosphere as a palimpsest of cosmic time.
A selection from Sarker Protick’s ‘Dhaka 1217’, a recent series of 135 black-and-white photographs, is displayed at Ishara. The complete body of work forms the basis of a forthcoming book of the same title (co-published by Nokta Books and Sarker Protick, November 2026). Captured between 2011 and 2026, the works document the transformation of a one-square-mile radius around the neighbourhood where the artist was born and continues to live. Here, it is what is missing from the image that carries residues of history. The built environment slowly encroaches on parks, lakes and vegetation: A railway line under development almost obscures rolling hills in the distance; palm trees stand buffeted by rain behind construction hoardings.
Ecological ruin intermingles with personal loss in these works. Fallen hair gathers on the floor, a woman gazes from an old photograph in a stained envelope, and a stack of books collects dust. Demonstrators of the 2024 Monsoon Revolution come together, protesting lost livelihoods. These scenes position the city of Dhaka as a contested terrain in which social, ecological and individual histories converge.
Bringing together perspectives from Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh, ‘The sky held it, the earth remembered’ foregrounds shared experiences of ecological decline, revealing how rivers, landscapes, and skies testify to changes that transcend national borders. Rather than offering a definitive historical account, the exhibition invites sustained and close attentiveness to subtle traces that narrate stories of both dispossession and resilience, for those who are willing to hear them.
Artworks for ‘The sky held it, the earth remembered’ have been loaned from Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco and Shrine Empire, New Delhi.
The Han Nefkens Foundation – South Asian Video Art Production Grant 2023 in collaboration with Prameya Art Foundation, New Delhi, is presented in partnership with Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai; Nottingham Contemporary; Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT); Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (M HKA); and Para Site, Hong Kong.
About the artists
Shahana Rajani (b. 1987) is a multi-disciplinary artist exploring the visualities and landscapes at the intersections of development, militarism, and ecological resistance in Pakistan. Community-based and collaborative approaches to research are central to her practice. Working across moving image, installation, and printed matter, she engages with dissident histories and practices of representation and relation.
Rajani is a co-founder of Karachi LaJamia (with Zahra Malkani), an experimental project devoted to seeking and sharing eco-pedagogies emerging from struggles around land and water in the city.
Rajani is the recipient of the Han Nefkens Foundation – South Asian Video Art Production Grant 2023. The resulting work ‘Four Acts of Recovery’ (2025) and its expanded iteration ‘Lines That World a River’ have been presented in solo and group exhibitions at partnering institutions Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai (2026); Prameya Art Foundation, New Delhi (2026); Nottingham Contemporary (2026); Para-Site, Hong Kong (2025–2026); Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT) (2025); Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (M HKA) (2025).
Her work has also featured in group exhibitions internationally including Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai (2026); Chobi Mela, Dhaka (2026); Singapore Biennale (2025); 13th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2025); 421 Arts Campus, Abu Dhabi (2024); and Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai (2019).
Rohini Devasher (b. 1978) is an artist whose research-intensive practice examines the intersections between the humanities and the sciences. For Devasher, a close reading of the interplay between site, observer, and observation is key to exploring the relationships between the human and the more-than-human. Spanning video, sound, printmaking, drawing, installation, and other media, her projects illuminate weird, seductive, and entangled worlds.
A longtime amateur astronomer, Devasher collaborates with other astronomers to probe the stories, conversations, and histories of those whose lives have been transformed by the night sky. She investigates the remote and often strange sites where observers gather, along with the forms and modes of interaction that mediate their observations. The theoretical grounding of her work draws from the history of science, philosophy, speculative fiction, and eco-horror.
Her work has been shown at Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Riyadh (2026); Ishara House, Kochi (2025–2026); Taipei Biennial (2025); Shanghai Biennale (2025); Rubin Museum, New York (2021–2022); Sea Art Festival, Busan (2021); Vienna Academy of Fine Arts (2021); KU[N]ST Leuven City Festival (2021); Sharjah Biennial 14: ‘Leaving the Echo Chamber’ (2019); Museu d’Art Contemporanide Barcelona (2018); 7th Moscow International Biennale of Contemporary Art (2018); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2016); and the first Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2012).
Devasher was named the 2024 Deutsche Bank Artist of the Year. In 2023, she was a dual resident at Arts at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva, and the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS-TIFR) in Bengaluru. In 2018, she spent 26 days as artist-in-residence on an oil tanker traveling from Fiji to Singapore as part of The Owner’s Cabin Residency Programme.
Devasher holds a BFA in painting from New Delhi’s College of Art and an MFA in printmaking from the Winchester School of Art at the University of Southampton.
Sarker Protick (b. 1986) is an artist based in Dhaka who works through photography and moving image, exploring the layered relationships between landscape, history, ecology, and power. His practice focuses on colonial legacies, infrastructure and environmental transformation in Bangladesh and the wider Bengal region.
Since 2017, Protick has been a resident curator of Chobi Mela and in 2024 was invited to co-curate the eighth edition of Colomboscope. A graduate of the Pathshala South Asian Media Institute in Dhaka, Protick has been teaching at the school for over a decade, working closely with a younger generation of image-makers in the country.
Protick’s work has been exhibited globally at institutions such as Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Riyadh (2026); 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane (2024–2025); C/O Berlin (2024–2025); Hayy Jameel, Jeddah (2023–2024); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2023); Dhaka Art Summit (2023); Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa (2023); Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai (2022–2023, 2021); 32nd Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF) (2021); Yokohama Triennale (2020); and Triennial of Photography Hamburg (2018).
He has received numerous recognitions and fellowships, including the After Nature Prize awarded by C/O Berlin & Crespo Foundation, Joop Swart Masterclass, Light Work Residency, Magnum Foundation Fund, Foam Talent Amsterdam, and World Press Photo Award.
His works can be found in the collections of Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai; Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; KNMA, New Delhi; and Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai.
Ishara Art Foundation
Ishara Art Foundation was founded in 2019 as a non-profit organisation dedicated to presenting contemporary art of South Asia. Located in Dubai, the Foundation supports emerging and established practices that advance critical dialogue and explore global interconnections. Guided by a research-led approach, Ishara realises its mission through exhibitions, onsite and online programmes, education initiatives and collaborations in the UAE and internationally. The Foundation facilitates exchange between South Asian and international artistic networks that include museums, foundations, institutions, galleries and individuals. The Ishara logo, a synthesis of a square and circle, is based on an ideogram by Zarina to convey the word آسمان (‘Aasman’), sky. It forms one of 36 images from ‘Home is a Foreign Place’ (1999), a work in the collection of Ishara’s Founder and Chairperson, Smita Prabhakar. Ishara signifies a gesture, a signal or a hint, and is a word common to several languages including Arabic, Persian, Hindi, Bengali, Swahili and Urdu. Ishara Art Foundation is presented in partnership with Alserkal.
Website: www.ishara.org
Smita Prabhakar, Founder
Smita Prabhakar is an entrepreneur, collector and art patron who has been based in the UAE for over four decades. She is the Founder of Ishara Art Foundation. Smita is also a member of the Tate International Council (London), the Middle Eastern Circle of the Guggenheim Museum (New York), and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection (Venice).
Smita’s collection, The Ishara Art Foundation and The Prabhakar Collection, focuses on South Asian contemporary artworks that reflect diverse voices and shared histories from across the region. She has supported the V.S. Gaitonde exhibition, ‘Painting as Process, Painting as Life’ in New York and Venice; a workshop around Shilpa Gupta’s artwork, ‘For, In Your Tongue, I Cannot Fit’, organised at the fourth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale; and the seventh and eighth editions of the Colomboscope Festival.
Smita is also the Founder of Ishara House in Kochi, Kerala. Launched in 2025 as the first initiative of its kind, Ishara House consists of a curated exhibition, public programming, and collaborative projects, taking place every two years within the historic Kashi Hallegua House. The initiative extends Ishara’s mission beyond the UAE, fostering dialogue and exchange between the artistic communities of the Gulf and South Asia. Riyas Komus serves as the Artistic Director.
Sasha Altaf, Director
Sasha Altaf is the Director of the Ishara Art Foundation in Dubai. Her longstanding curatorial practice of more than 20 years is dedicated to shaping the discourse around feminism in the contemporary and visual arts of India.
Alserkal Avenue
Alserkal Avenue was established in 2008 by Alserkal Initiatives following the visionary thinking of its founder, Emirati
