Exhibition

Alphabet Of Touch >

Name: Alphabet Of Touch >
Start: 2020-09-11
End: 2020-10-10
Location: NOME

11 Sep 2020 – 10 Oct 2020

Regular hours

Monday: Closed
Tuesday: 10:00 – 18:00
Wednesday: 10:00 – 18:00
Thursday: 10:00 – 18:00
Friday: 10:00 – 18:00
Saturday: 10:00 – 18:00
Sunday: 10:00 – 18:00

NOME

Berlin
Berlin, Germany

Address

Potsdamer Str. 72
Berlin
Berlin
10785
Germany

NOME

Travel Information

M48; M85
U-Bahnhof Bülowstraße

Directions via Google Maps Directions via Citymapper

Event map

The “muted howls” of the exhibition’s title refer to Sajan Mani’s translation of the protest songs of Dalit activist and poet Poykayil Appachan (1879–1939), from the suppressed history of South India to the drawn-upon walls of the European gallery.

About

Sajan hails from a family of rubber tappers in a north Keralan village. Rubber is inextricable from extractive colonial histories and the utilitarian products of the capitalist present. In Mesoamerican cultures, the indigenous sap has a mysterious and sacred role in spiritual practices, and now it gathers a sensorial place in the artist’s memory. These multi-layered significations animate several works on display: the video Unlearning Lessons from my Father (2018) depicts his father at work with the rubber trees, projected onto a stretched piece of this same material, while the white silkscreen prints of the artist’s body, I want to touch the BWO of the rubber tree (2020), also on stretched rubber, extend a politics of touch. This collection of works embodies Sajan’s moving philosophy, which happens in the intimate space between personal and collective histories.