Liminal Gaps

Journey through space and time as conceptual artists Ayesha Singh, Raqs Media Collective, Asim Waqif and Afrah Shafiq offer brand new ways of looking at the familiar.

Embark on a fascinating journey through space and time with a contemporary Indian visual art show that explores the spaces ‘in between’, or transitional spaces. The exhibit – the Cultural Centre’s first to showcase only Indian artists – reshapes perspectives on India’s evolving cultural identity.  

Featuring four floors of intriguing interdisciplinary and conceptual artists such as Ayesha Singh, Raqs Media Collective, Asim Waqif and Afrah Shafiq, the unique group art show has been curated by Mafalda Millies Kahane and Roya Sachs, with executive production by Elizabeth Edelman Sachs from TRIADIC. The international creative house has previously curated the absurdist exhibit ‘TOILETPAPER: RUN AS SLOW AS YOU CAN’, which garnered spectacular response at the Art House. 

So, what is ‘Liminal Gaps’? The term ‘limen’ comes from the Latin word for threshold, so liminality refers to the transitional spaces or transformational phases of human life. ‘Liminal Gaps’ – the gaps between one space and the next – can be physical, metaphorical, or even emotional. To find out more, we invite you to enter the threshold.

First Floor: Ayesha Singh
The first floor presents Delhi-based artist Ayesha Singh’s largest ‘Hybrid Drawings’ (2024) to date. 

Singh’s work highlights socio-political hierarchies through the assertion of established systems of power in architecture. Her style combines architectural elements from her growing-up years in Delhi, including Indo-Saracenic, Modernist, Mughal, Hindu and Sikh architecture.

In this exhibit, her playfully linear installation is in fact, a three-dimensional drawing that reimagines India’s distinctive skylines. As the audience walks through the space, the entanglement of sight-lines expand to make the histories they reference visible, enveloping visitors in a sense of anticipated nostalgia. 

Second Floor: Raqs Media Collective

The second floor invites viewers into a temporal universe created by Raqs Media Collective – an internationally renowned artist group comprising artists Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta. 

Founded in 1992, the collective enjoys playing multiple roles as artists, curators, editors, filmmakers, and sometimes as philosophical agent provocateurs. They come into this exhibit with a set of five works that are a reflection on the notion of time – exposing us to the past, present and future. The central work, ‘Escapement’ (2008), is a rather surreal expression of the same. 

In continuation with the theme of elasticity of time and space, Raqs Media Collective’s installations spill over into the staircases with the work ‘Nerves’ (2018), which acts as a passageway from one artistic space to another.

Third Floor: Asim Waqif

The third floor is occupied by Asim Waqif, a trained architect who has also worked as an art director. His work investigates materiality, the

environment, and space through expansive installations that bridge architecture, art, design, and urban planning.

Enter ‘Chaal’, the colossal bamboo installation on showcase. Laboriously built on site with local artisans, it is a true celebration of Indian craftsmanship where Waqif challenges traditional practices by giving each collaborator the autonomy to make decisions. With elements of sound and light, ‘Chaal’ examines ideas of ecology, architecture, and anthropology – drawing visitors into a sensory experience.   

Fourth Floor: Afrah Shafiq
The final chapter offers a hyperreal universe imagined by Goa-based artist Afrah Shafiq. Shafiq’s work aims to rupture existing narratives, search for the invisible, and create speculative new ways of looking at the familiar. 

In keeping with the essence, ‘Sultana’s Reality’ (2017) is an interactive multimedia story that explores the relationship between women and the colonial education movement in India using archival imagery, the writings of female authors, and history. 

Following an Alice in Wonderland-style adventure, the installation brings to life accounts of different women who were subjected to domestic

limitations, many of whom went on to write books and break societal conventions. Drawing its title from ‘Sultana’s Dream’, the 1905 science-fiction short story of feminist utopia by Begum Rokeya Sakhawat

Hossein, the work explores the inner lives of the first generation of women to be educated in pre-independent India. The result is a liminal space that feels entirely digital, as though one is trapped in a computer game, where time has no purpose.

Entry to this exhibition is free for children under 7, senior citizens and art students.