Serpentine Gallery · Kensington
Amar Kanwar
A major solo exhibition of new and existing films by New Delhi-based artist Amar Kanwar, transforming Serpentine North into a meditative visual and sonic environment exploring displacement, nationalism and memory.
You walk in and can't see your own shoes. Serpentine North is kept so dark that the Standard's critic was startled by a gallery assistant looming out of the gloom, and watched a woman fall over a chair. Then screens surface: a peacock preening wet feathers, dried flowers in a wooden bowl, sunlight on water.
There are three works, all shadowed by the 1947 Partition of India. Such a Morning (85 minutes) follows a maths professor who blacks out the windows of a train carriage in a forest. The Peacock's Graveyard (2023) plays across seven screens, and The Charcoal Man (2026) premieres here. Lit paper screens on the walls stand for the professor's 49 kinds of darkness. All three run to about three hours.
The Standard gave it five stars and said it "could change your life – if you let it"; the Guardian (four stars) called it "superbly staged" and warned it "makes demands on your patience". Sit down, ideally at the front, and stay. Entry is free.
Editor's pick
New and existing films by the New Delhi-based artist fill Serpentine North as a single space of image and sound. They deal with displacement, nationalism and memory.
Look for
The woman with the rifle
In Such a Morning, an old woman sits in a rattan chair holding an antique rifle while her house is taken apart around her.
The paper windows
Handmade banana, ramie and cotton papers glow from the walls between the films, carrying fragments of the professor's letters.
The gold bracelet
In The Charcoal Man, a father has his son melt the gold out of computer circuit boards into a bracelet he can pawn if they have to flee.
The photographs never shown
Also in The Charcoal Man: a photographer's archive of Partition violence, left on condition that it is kept forever but never shown.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Going Solo
- Rainy Days
About 180 min
Skip if
You've only got twenty minutes: the films run about three hours and reward sitting through them.
