The World that Belongs to Us
Sharing a common thread of combining autobiography and activism, and working across a wide range of media including painting, photography, film, animation, wall drawing and site-specific installation, these practices activate a wide range of conversations around community and belonging, friendship and intimacy, migrant and diasporic storytelling and queer world-making.
Chila Kumari Singh Burman, Chitra Ganesh, Sunil Gupta and Charan Singh, Roshini Kempadoo, Pamila Matharu, Hardeep Pandhal, Jagdeep Raina, Sa’dia Rehman, Salman Toor
The title of this exhibition was inspired by an anthology of poetry from South Asia, edited by Aditi Angiras and Akhil Katyal.
A dedicated microsite accompanies the exhibition with essays by Dr Alice Correia, Dr Alpesh K Patel and Aziz Sohail and documentation of the exhibition.
Please check our website for additional events throughout the duration of the exhibition.
Exhibition preview
Thursday 23 November 2023, 6-8pm
Free, all welcome
How Do We Do?: Networks, Friendships, Histories, Futures
Saturday 25 November 2023, 10.30am-4.30pm
£8 / £6 concessions. Includes lunch and refreshments.
In parallel to The World that Belongs to Us, this symposium explores some of the key concerns within the exhibition. Themes include; entangled South Asian diaspora networks from the 1980s through today across the UK, USA and Canada; the importance of collaboration and friendship across time and space; interrogating histories and archives; and queer and feminist world-building.
Dream Baby Dream: Queer Worldmaking
Saturday 1 June 2024, 2-4.30pm. Free, all welcome.
Join us to celebrate the closing of our major exhibition The World that Belongs to Us. Through talks, poetry and performance bringing together cultural practitioners from all over the UK, this closing programme unravels the threads of queer themes within the project, which have been sustained through the decades of organising, friendship and worldmaking. We will contextualise the exhibition within a history of queer cultural production and organising in Britain from the perspective of South Asian and other diasporic communities. In doing so, we center dreaming as an act and strategy of making queer diasporic life possible and visible.
Speakers include Professor Rohit Dasgupta, Saima Razzaq from Birmingham Pride, curator and arts worker Yasmyn Nettle, artist-curator Candice Nembhard and poet/writer Jhani Randhawa.
The World that Belongs to Us is funded by Walsall Council and Arts Council England with additional support from Art Fund and the British Council’s International Collaboration Grants, which are designed to support UK and overseas organisations to collaborate on international projects. Sa’dia Rehman’s participation is supported by Greater Columbus Arts Council. Pamila Matharu’s participation is supported by Canada Council for the Arts. The New Art Gallery Walsall also gratefully acknowledges the support of Jhaveri Contemporary, Luhring Augustine, Hales Gallery and Cooper Cole.
