first there was a sea

curated by Azra Dawood

EXHIBITION INFORMATION

This group exhibition features works by Aaron Cohick and Divya Victor; Priyanka Dasgupta & Chad Marshall; Utsa Hazarika; and Baseera Khan. Imagined as a “continuum room,” the space of the gallery explores the shifting intersections of religion and race that have shaped South Asian lives in the United States. The featured projects connect multiple timelines in US history, often using objects and methods that speak of crossings or journeys. A trunk lined with hand-painted scrolls depicts the travels of a parafictional Bengali sailor, who migrates to the US in 1918 and lives as Black in Harlem, New York City. A book of poems unfurls like a tourist map, a type of document that instantly marks the person holding it as a foreigner. And a tiny postage stamp encapsulates a global history of solidarities—as well as unfulfilled promises—between South Asian and Black communities.

The artworks and installations are further shaped by each artist’s interest in the built environment: from the scale of a city neighborhood or the forested ghats of India, down to a concrete sidewalk in suburban USA or the privacy of an imagined interior space; and, from the cross-section of a monumental neoclassical column resurfaced in handmade rugs from Kashmir, down to the glitched surface of a latticed screen that recalls a jaali from the court of Mughal Emperor Akbar. The artists use these different scales and elements as conceptual—and at times physical—scaffolding for their inquiry into race and religion.

Unlike the single historical moment of a period room, the visitor to this gallery toggles between objects and portals that reveal people, time periods, spaces, and little-known histories that are so central to the South Asian (and American) experience. Taken together, the gallery space and featured works speak to the complexity and spectrum of these experiences.

The show will be open to the public at 12Gates, 106 N 2nd St, Philadelphia, PA, from May 17th, 2025 till August 16, 2025.