Joyfulness and celebration, colourful dance and rich tales, South Asian culture has given us a multitude of fascinations that uplift our lives. To celebrate the global south and the UK’s largest Asian community, we present Sudden Beams, our first programme focusing on South Asian artists from 1 March till the end of April 2021.
Sudden Beams introduces work by UK and international South Asian artists working with sound and digital media, presenting work on Platform Asia’s website and across social media platforms. See and experience music, sound, food and film through three free programmes about South Asian culture. Learn about artists’ practices through artworks, commissions, journals and more.
Sudden Beams is a free programme available to access worldwide. Supported by Arts Council England.
Programme of events
Normalising Disaster: 1-14 March
Homing In: 15 March – 12 April
Public Roots and Beaten Tracks
Normalising Disaster explores common human experiences, such as emotion and morality, and the influence of mythology, hyperreality and technology on our lives. The exhibition features work by artists Devadeep Gupta, Vishal Kumaraswamy, Sarker Protick, Sahej Rahal and Himali Singh Soin, curated by Moritz Cheung.
Homing In is a series of digital commissions considering international, present and historic experiences of isolation, and the ways in which people are connected to their homes and one another when set at a distance. This programme presents five new performative and video works by artists Suleman Faisal, Fatima Khademi, Rajinder Singh, Himali Singh Soin and Shanzay Subzwari, curated by Chloe Hodge and Zena Khan.
Public Roots and Beaten Tracks sets out to explore the ways in which native ecosystems can function as carriers of agency, interfering with the reconstruction of historiography and its methods of inclusion and omission. The project explores sound as a forceful movement to excavate ‘hidden voices’, forgotten ecologies and landscapes: bringing the roots to the surface. By moving away from the linear organisation of time, it aims to accentuate transcendental entanglements with the nonhuman, and tracks uncharted history and planetary artistic practices in South Asia. Led by curator Canan Batur, the programme presents a series of digital journals, podcasts and screenings.
Sudden Beams is supported by Arts Council England, produced by Platform Asia.
All artists