New North and South
30 September 2017 - 25 February 2018
New North and South is a collective programme which marks the 70th anniversary of the Partition of India and Pakistan. This is a network based around connectivity, borders, and perspective, made up of music, film and performance exhibits. In Manchester, three venues make up the story: The Whitworth, Manchester Art Gallery and Manchester Museum.
New North and South is a triumph of collaboration, a display of the power that comes with connectivity, and a moving narrative of disparity, tension and mobility.
At the Museum, Reena Saini Kallat blends the animals of hostile, neighbouring countries to make a vulnerable, imaginary artefact. In this, the Irish deer and English lion combine to make a ‘De-on’, its skeleton bared. A fused swallow and saker, holds thick barbed wire in its beak, as if making a home from the barriers opposed on it. In another room, electronic cables and barbed wires are made into amazing sculptures of lungs, trees and landscapes. In ‘Anatomy of Distance’ an alarm goes of as you walk close to it, a physical embodiment of the hostile borders Kallat conveys.
Complementing the New North and South programme will be performances, film screenings, music events and social history exhibitions that will take place across Manchester including: Memories of Partition, coordinated by Manchester Museum, The Royal Exchange Theatre, the Race Relations Archive and the Manchester BME Network, which will collect oral history interviews from people affected by the Partition of 1947. Contemporary South Asian music with Manchester’s Band On The Wall and a Partition film season at HOME will also take place.
The exhibition raised many questions and observations within its installations and artwork; the messages were many layered and relevant to external and internal conflicts that continue to affect us all.
This exhibition also coincided with the start of a programme of events leading up to the opening of the Museum’s new South Asia Gallery in 2020, developed in partnership with the British Museum.