The artists first encountered this historical past nearly by chance, whereas researching salt for an earlier undertaking. “It was mentioned in passing,” they recall, “and it seemed improbable that something so large could have existed for much of the 19th century without everyone knowing about it.” That improbability turned the hook. What adopted was years of analysis—by means of Roy Moxham’s guide The Great Hedge of India, after which into archives in Delhi, London, Kew Gardens, and the Alkazi Collection—piecing collectively a story that existed extra in tables and maps than in pictures or anecdotes. “There was textual evidence,” they clarify, “but no imagery.” That absence turned an invite. If the archive was incomplete, might artists step in—to not fabricate historical past, however to check its limits?
Hylozoic/Desires I and Thou, 2024 Print on aluminium 150 cm x112 cm
Hylozoic/Desires I and Thou, 2024 Print on aluminium 150 cm x112 cm
Resisting the temptation to retell colonial historical past in acquainted tones of shock or revelation, the showcase, as a substitute, lingers on the quieter, stranger features of the hedge: its porosity, its failure, and the sudden worlds that flourished inside it. This was by no means a clear line. People crossed it. Smugglers slipped by means of. Winds, rats, snakes, and tigers breached it. Termites ate away at it—slowly, persistently, turning a huge imperial undertaking into mud.
Hylozoic/Desires, The Hedge of Halomancy, 2025, movie nonethelessHimali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser
Inside the museum, the exhibition unfolds in phases. After encountering the textile hedge outside—a fragment of a for much longer set up first proven on the arts and cultural middle, Somerset House, in London—you enter the particular undertaking area, the place a large-scale video work, The Hedge of Halomancy, turns into the fulcrum of the present. Blending archival materials with fiction, it follows two historic figures whose lives intersect the hedge from reverse ends: AO Hume, the British officer overseeing the customs line who would later grow to be a founding father of the Indian National Congress; and Mayalee, a courtesan who seems briefly in a tax ledger for insisting that her stipend be paid in salt.
Hylozoic/Desires, Namak Halal/Namak Haram, 2025 Vegetal dyes block print on natural cotton, 80m x 2.5 m. Install view at Somerset House.
Hylozoic/Desires, Namak Halal/Namak Haram, 2025 Vegetal dyes block print on natural cotton, 80m x 2.5 m. Install view at Somerset House.
Mayalee’s story—expanded right here by means of efficiency—turns into a quiet act of defiance. When the empire makes an attempt to withdraw her salt fee, she refuses. Instead, she makes use of salt to conduct halomancy, a type of divination, sending whispered messages throughout the hedge. Justice, the film suggests, doesn’t all the time arrive loudly. Sometimes it travels invisibly, telepathically. Sometimes it begins with a single refusal.