(close)

MY BODY IS A
WALKING EXHBITION //

ROOM 41 IS CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

[Spatial Installation, Publication & Design Research]

2022-2023

Looking has long been shaped, controlled, and often misused.

my body is a walking exhibition that interrogates the imperial gaze and its assumed right to observe, classify, and possess.

The project draws from objects of the Indian subcontinent displayed at the Great Exhibition of 1851, many of which later entered the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. It positions these objects within a broader continuum of imperial display systems that continue to inform contemporary exhibition practices.

Amongst the 600+ objects exhibited in the Room 41, a nuanced account of imperial eye emmerges.

The room addresses the presence of the statue of Nandi, meant to be worshiped by placing your hand on their head at the entrance of a shiv temple only to end up in a room where it cannot be touched. But how the power of dieties carved in stone channelize that Shiv Ekamukhalingam finds their way in the same room. Far removed from their original contexts but still never seperated.

The room addresses the presence of the belongings of two powerful colonial resistors that were lost and looted during colonial wars against the british army. The tipu’s tiger and The Throne of Maharja Ranjit Singh continuing their resiliance against imperial gaze.

room 41 is closed until further notice.

(Image by Femke Reijerman)

DAE Graduation Show at Dutch Design Week 2023

(Image by Fileona Dkhar)

(Image by Fileona Dkhar)

(Image by Fileona Dkhar)

(Image by Fileona Dkhar)

DAE Graduation Show at Dutch Design Week 2023

(Image by Deepali Pahwa)

(Image by Deepali Pahwa)

Elements of the spatial installation weaving a nuanced account of Imperial Gaze

The presence of mundane objects such a vase belonging to an unknown resident of colonial india or a silver platter belonging to a british general who served in the east india company.

The presence of huqqa base that was exhibited in the great exhibition of 1851 as a sample of indian craftsmanship. Turning the practice into a commodity and the object into a relic.

The presence of miniature painting from the mughal era of the indian subcontinent that encapsulates in it an pre modern world view of visual articulation. A flat visual spatial construction of multilayered narratives which continues to influence the
re-articulation of the Room 41.

Colonial Imagery where subjects are covered in white fabric revealing objectifying gaze:
Artwork : White Background Brown Foreground

Colonial Imagery of The great exhibition 1851 is intervened by covering in background in white paint forshadowing the fate of these south asain objects future musuem context:
Artwork : White Background Brown Foreground

Image of the Room 41 South Asian Gallery at the V&A Musuem visualised to be covered in khadi fabric revealing underlying imperial gaze

White khadi fabric covers for carefully selected objects present in the V&A South Asian Collection

Spatial Installation set-up at Design Academy Eindhoven, NL

The intervention materialises through acts of covering and flattening. Objects are draped in khadi fabric, a material historically embedded in India’s freedom struggle, transforming
the gesture into one of both resistance, mourning and care.

The covers obscure visibility, offering the objects a
form of rest while symbolically mourning their displacement.

Flattening operates as both a visual and spatial strategy. By collapsing depth and disrupting perspective, the work challenges the colonial construct of exhibition-making rooted in separation, foreground and background, viewer and object, subject and other.
In doing so, it reveals the colonial impulse to isolate, frame,
and control.

Together, these gestures unsettle entrenched hierarchies of display, proposing an alternative language, one that resists the authority of the gaze and reclaims the possibility of opacity, protection, and relational presence.

Publication ‘My body is a walking exhibition’

Three languages (English,Punjabi,Hindi) intertwined in a single sentence, an everyday post-colonial experience
(Image by Andrea)

Exhibited at We Will Design, Base Milano at Milan Design Week 2024
(Image by Andrea)

(Image by Cartacabone)

[Team]
Designer, Researcher & Author:
Bhavneet Kaur

Publication Editor:
Mankirat Kaur

[Recognition]

Awarded ‘cum-laude’ at M.A. Contextual Design, Design Academy Eindhoven

[Exhibitions]

2023 DAE Graduation Show, Heuvel Gallerie, Dutch Design Week (Eindhoven, NL)

2023 BYOB Fair, Enter Enter (Amsterdam, NL)

2024 We Will Design, BASE Milano, Milan Design Week (Milan, IT)

go to <homepage> <design & research> <publishing & education> <studio page>