WASHINGTON, DC.- The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art will present “Unstill Waters: Contemporary Photography from India,” an exhibition that features 29 works by some of the most prominent artists working in India. Through photography and video, these artists forefront the landscape of India, both real and imagined, as a powerful means to examine contemporary environmental and social issues of broader global concern. The exhibition will be on view in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Dec. 10–June 11, 2023—during the museum’s centennial—and celebrates Umesh and Sunanda Gaur’s gift to the museum’s growing collection of contemporary Asian photography.
Visually dynamic in scale and format, the works in “Unstill Waters” offer vivid perspectives on the human relationship to place. Artists Ketaki Sheth and Gigi Scaria look to the streets of Mumbai and New Delhi as their subjects, while the landscape view becomes a highly symbolic setting for Sheba Chhachhi. Atul Bhalla and Ravi Agarwal convey the profound importance of water, specifically the enduring cultural connection to the Yamuna River in northern India, its current endangered state and the relationship between rivers and rapidly changing urban life.
“Unstill Waters” complements the centennial exhibition “A Splendid Land: Paintings from Royal Udaipur” (Nov. 19–May 14, 2023). This major survey of 17th–19th-century works from Udaipur, India, centers on the city’s landscapes, lake systems and palaces and includes an ambient soundscape by the renowned experimental filmmaker Amit Dutta.
“As the National Museum of Asian Art enters its next century, we are even more committed to expanding our contemporary collection and placing it in dialogue with objects from Asia’s deep traditions of art,” said Chase F. Robinson, Dame Jillian Sackler Director of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Freer Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art. “We are also celebrating the museum as a space where diverse people convene, converse and learn. ‘Unstill Waters’ incorporates all of this and exemplifies our mission to exhibit and interpret Asian art in ways that deepen our collective understanding of Asia, the U.S. and the world.”
An accompanying program series in conjunction with the opening of the exhibition (details below) explores cultural attitudes toward water and speaks to environmental racism, resource management and climate concerns both locally and globally, discussing the parallel histories of the Yamuna River and the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C. Speakers include an artist featured in “Unstill Waters,” professors of environmental and global studies and staff from the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum.
“Umesh and Sunanda Gaur have been collecting with the goal of supporting collaborations with scholars and students, and to help others learn about India through the extraordinary work of modern and contemporary artists,” said Carol Huh, associate curator of contemporary Asian art. “It is an honor and a pleasure to follow their generous example through this exhibition and related programs.”
