This work is in response to recurring visits to a site in Karnataka, India, currently known as Hampi, previously known by other names: Vijayanagara, ‘City of Victory’; the ancient Kishkindha from the epic Ramayana. The place is comprised entirely of ruins, vestiges of palaces and temples which exist entirely outside of the museum context. There are no absences here. Artefacts are not plundered but presently form the landscape. They exist in simultaneity with rather than in opposition to nature — degrading, ageing, changing. While the site has a documented imperial history from the 14th to 16th century, its mythological and religious dimensions are considered by historians to ‘lie beyond the categories of historical time’.

Alluding to the site’s mythological significance, inscription against inscription, consists of two sheets of copper, suspended parallel in a darkened space. Entering the passageway, rows of print are encountered, invoking the untranslated Indic script found on granite boulders strewn across the landscape in Hampi. The marks printed are the residues of a previous work (Pilgrimage), which transferred ‘poor images’ of the already fragmented mural of the Ajanta Caves, disintegration by the hands of Western museological intervention, onto copper image-forms. The leftover indexes are reactivated once again in a circulatory process, obfuscating demarcations between origins. On the highly reflective outer surfaces of the copper sheets is the dialogic projection of Nandi the bull, gatekeeper and guardian of Shiva, sitting unwaveringly amidst the flow of the Tungabhadra River. Indistinct sounds of the water resonate directionally within crevices of reddened walls.

The installation contemplates the possibility of re-inscription within a museological context. It asks — what does a counter-colonial signature look like, on a temporal material that intrinsically resists preservation?

Exhibition text on inscription against inscription by Associate Professor Sigi Jöttkandt Essay Link