The sky held it, the earth remembered

The sky held it, the earth remembered is a group exhibition at Ishara Art Foundation in Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, from 11 September to 15 December 2026. It shows work by Shahana Rajani, Rohini Devasher and Sarker Protick, in collaboration with the Han Nefkens Foundation.

The exhibition brings together three works in photography, moving image and installation. In the foundation's words, it "examines how land, water, and the cosmos serve as living archives of memory and history." Rajani's Lines That World a River (2026) is a three-channel video with sound, fourteen minutes and forty-six seconds long. It follows displaced communities of the Indus delta who make murals and paintings to reconstruct their ancestral villages, submerged after the building of dams and barrages. An enclosure evoking a dargah stands at the centre of the three screens.

Devasher's Latent Fields (2023) consists of three habotai silk panels suspended from the ceiling, each measuring 3 by 5.5 metres. Their images are inspired by sunspots and other solar phenomena. Protick's Dhaka 1217 is a series of 135 black-and-white photographs taken between 2011 and 2026, shown here as a selection. The photographs record changes within a one-square-mile radius around the Dhaka neighbourhood where he was born and still lives.

Shahana Rajani (b. 1987) is a multidisciplinary artist. The foundation writes that her work explores "the visualities and landscapes at the intersections of development, militarism, and ecological resistance in Pakistan." Rohini Devasher (b. 1978) has a research-intensive practice that examines the intersections between the humanities and the sciences. Sarker Protick (b. 1986) is based in Dhaka and works through photography and moving image.

Rajani received the inaugural South Asian Video Art Production Grant of the Han Nefkens Foundation, run in 2023 with Prameya Art Foundation, New Delhi. Lines That World a River is an expanded iteration of her Four Acts of Recovery (2025), produced by the Han Nefkens Foundation. Works in the exhibition are lent by Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco, and Shrine Empire, New Delhi.