“Unstill Waters: Contemporary Photography from India,” featured 29 works by some of the most prominent artists working in India. Through photography and video, these artists forefront the landscape of India, both real and imagined, as a powerful means to examine contemporary environmental and social issues of broader global concern. 

The exhibition was on view in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Dec. 10–June 11, 2023—during the museum’s centennial—and celebrated Umesh and Sunanda Gaur’s gift to the museum’s growing collection of contemporary Asian photography. 

Visually dynamic in scale and format, the works in “Unstill Waters” offers vivid perspectives on the human relationship to place. Artists Ketaki Sheth and Gigi Scaria look to the streets of Mumbai and New Delhi as their subjects, while the landscape view becomes a highly symbolic setting for Sheba Chhachhi. Atul Bhalla and Ravi Agarwal convey the profound importance of water, specifically the enduring cultural connection to the Yamuna River in northern India, its current endangered state and the relationship between rivers and rapidly changing urban life. 

The exhibition was curated by Dr. Carol Huh, Associate Curator of Contemporary Asian Art at the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art.

https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/smithsonians-national-museum-asian-art-presents-unstill-waters-contemporary

https://asia.si.edu/whats-on/exhibitions/unstill-waters-contemporary-photography-from-india/