he exhibition `(Un) Layering the Future Past of South Asia: Young Artists` Voices` at the Soas (School of Oriental and African Studies) Gallery in London conceived and curated by Salima Hashmi and Manmeet K Walia brought together emerging artists from India, Pakistan and other Saarc (South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation) countries to reflect on the intertwined histories and futures of the region.

Through works grounded in lived experience of displacement, resistance, memory and inherited trauma the exhibition unfolded as a constellation of voices that challenged singular narratives and national boundaries.

The curatorial approach aligned with the American scholar Donna Haraway`s concept of `situated knowledge`, whichrejects the notion of a fixed, objective or universal truth in favour of a context-bound, relational understanding. The exhibition became not only a space of artistic expression but also a platform for transnational empathy, where meaning was not imposed but negotiated, witnessed and collectively imagined.

Such profound dialogues were vividly embodied in works grappling with personal and collective memory, particularly in the face of conflict and displacement. Hadi Rahnaward`s Fragile Balance masterfully crafted a combustible tapestry encapsulating the tension between vulnerability and resilience. Composed of roughly 9,000 matchsticks some charred, others scorched and many with untouched red phosphorus, notably bearing a clear impression of a military boot the piece evoked the perpetual threat of destruction and the precariousness of Afghan identity amidst conflict.

A disrupted fringe defines the carpet`s jagged border, scattered and incomplete, suggesting an abruptly truncated weaving process. This fractured edge mirrors profound uncertainty, echoing the scholar Jamal Elias`s words on Afghan rugs as `woven testimonies`, where each thread bears witness to memory, enduring conflict and indomitable will.

Contemporaneously, Moonis Ahmad creates unsettling, hybridartworks that blend myth, satire and technology to challenge power structures. He often utilises AI, archives and code to rewrite history and dissect political rhetoric, exposing the absurdities of speculative fiction. Amid Kashmir`s heavily militarised reality, his practice defiantly reimagines truth, borders and existence itself.

Expanding on this exploration of shared heritage and rupture, other artists utilised textile and symbolic forms to bridge divides and articulate historical wounds.

In Hum bhi dekhein ge [We too shall see], a powerful declaration of hope and inevitability once postulated by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, two artists from Pakistan and India Maheen Kazim and Purvai Rai collaborated across borders to embody continuity through a shared textile language and the mutuality of rivers and agriculture.

Maheen`s work featured geometric patterns inspired by the Charbagh the traditional quadrilateral Islamic Garden. Purvai, with her suspended set of tapestries in tones of black and white, featured silver embroidery with beadings and resin, suggested the ebbs and flows of rivers, and also addressed profound loss and suffering associated with the Partition.

Varunika Saraf`s The Longest Revolution was an intricate embroidery mapping South Asia`s feminist resistance, thread by thread. The work immortalises demands and manifestos, stitching proclamations of parity and declarations of dignity into delicate permanence. The quiet requests for justice, which once resounded with public anger and protests, are now a constant reminder of their ongoing fight for freedom.

By rendering women from allwalks of life with protest banners, slogans and silenced testimonies in textile, Saraf subverts the ephemeral nature of revolt, transforming cloth into a counter-archive. This is art as historical reckoning: where official records fade, her embroidery insists that we were here. To exhibit it publicly is to weave struggle into the fabric of the collective conscience.

The exhibition`s commitment to foregrounding marginalised voices and experiences was further amplified by artists quarrying into specific community narratives.

Ashfika Rahman, a Dhaka-born artist, weaved together myth, spirituality and contemporary struggle to shed light on marginalised communities. In her multidisciplinary work Redeem, she collaborated with the Oraon people to create embroidered and stitched pieces using shital pati a traditional, handmade fabric.

Through this work, Rahman explored the cultural and historical burdens borne by the community, using art as a powerful act of redemption and reclamation.

In contrast, Hanifa Alizada`s Die to Remain Alive uses striking blackand white self-portraits to expose the brutal pressures of assimilation forced upon Hazara women.

Documenting skin bleaching and feature alteration, she transforms personal trauma into a political statement. These instinctive images reclaim identity, turning survival into defiant visibility against systemic ethnic erasure.

Hema Shironi`s textile art used embroidery to map Sri Lanka`s colonial and civil war traumas.

She juxtaposed objects with a red thread and newspaper on fabric, evoking the loss of homes and the experience of migration. Similarly, Pradeep Thalawatta and Rinoshan Susiman used traditional and digital techniques to explore personal journeys and societal changes shaped by dissension and displacement in post-conflict Sri Lanka.

Concurrently, Palash Bhattacharjee`s Link Road, a threechannel video, explored migration and his family`s displacement, centred on Chittagong`s Kalurghat Bridge. It navigated the impacts of British India`s split, Partition and Bangladesh`s 1971 liberation.

The very act of artistic reinterpretation and deconstruction formed a significant thread, challengingestablishednarrativesand forms. Aisha Abid Hussain`s Lived Realities compellingly reinterpreted pivotal Islamic documents, notably vintage nikahnamas [marriage certificates] and pages from Bahishti Zevar, believed to be a foundational guide for married women in the Subcontinent. Through deliberate interventions stark black and white ink blocking, expressive scribbles, intricate yet often gibberish margins, tea stains and tears Hussain distorted the original text.

This evocative technique not only mirrored talismanic aesthetics butalso powerfully interrogated the perceived inviolability of these documents.

On a different tangent, Ghulam Mohammad created intricate, layered collages from countless tiny, cut-out Urdu alphabets, transforming them into textured calligraphic cartographies. His works, such as Hissar and Bazm, probe the unifying or divisive power of language.

Crucially, the exhibition consistently brought ecological concerns to the forefront, inextricably linking them to questions of identity, conflict and memory. Similarly, Ayesha Sultana`s meditations on glass and light evoked the intangible fragility of human and ecological existence. Delicate little glass pieces in Pools embodied a philosophy of interbeing, akin to Buddhist or Indigenous understandings of ecological entanglement, where human and non-human destinies are inextricably intertwined.

Sangita Maity`s incisive Changing the Course of the River explored India`s Chota Nagpur plateau, a mineral heartland devastated bymining and displacement. Her copper plates eloquently conveyed how the landscape transforms into a potent political text as rivers shift.

Maity`s multi-year engagement with indigenous communities revealed profound cultural erosion, and her diverse visual practice powerfully renders portraits and testimonies of lives irrevocably reshaped by extractiveindustries.

This ethos of challenging dominant narratives is vital. In a hyper-connected yet polarised era, synergistic cultural encounters are crucial. This project sparked dialogues that transcended rigid nationhood, amplifying the voices of young artists to combat 21st century global challenges.

(Un)Layering the Future Past of South Asia: Young Artists` Voices` was on display at the Soas Gallery in Londonfrom April ll-June 21, 2025 The writer is an art critic who spends his time in-between Birmingham and Lahore.

He can be reached at aarish.sardar@gmail.com