Land is more than a geographical space. It carries memories, identities, cultural histories and the stories of those who inhabit it. It is this relationship between land and longing that lies at the heart of Songs the Soil Keeps, Dotwalk’s third annual exhibition in Hyderabad.
Curated by Sibdas Sengupta, the exhibition brings together diverse artistic practices and timelines, creating a space where established masters and younger voices engage in a conversation through their works.
“The title of the show, Songs the Soil Keeps, is largely referring to the idea of how land and longing has inspired different artists from different generations,” begins Sibdas.
Despite their differences in style, medium and artistic language, he explains, “What connects the work is this kind of diversity through which this question towards identity is being practiced.”
This rootedness, he notes, is not simply about an artist’s geographical origin, but the relationship between place and artistic expression, and how that relationship evolves as the world changes.
The exhibition’s curatorial approach further developed this relationship through four distinct spaces, each exploring a different dimension of the land.
As we move ahead in this exploration of Songs the Soil Keeps, Sibdas points to the works of M F Husain, Manjit Bawa and A Ramachandran as examples of these connections.
Husain’s horses, Manjit’s depiction of a man and a tiger, and Ramachandran’s two monkey works bring attention to the relationship between humans and animals across different artistic practices.
“In that period, the artist also exercised this human relationship to the animals. At times it is a domestic kind of a relationship, while other times, it’s a more social, cultural, or symbolic kind of a relationship they carry,” he says.
Songs the Soil Keeps also engages with Hyderabad’s art landscape and the cultural relationship the city shares with its surroundings. For Sibdas, presenting the show in Hyderabad makes the region’s artistic practices an important part of the larger conversation.
“There are so many artists from Telangana, from Andhra Pradesh, and they are being widely celebrated across the globe,” he expresses, pointing to the inclusion of artists such as Ravinder Reddy, Thota Vaikuntam, T Venkanna and V Ramesh, alongside other practitioners.