Arthshila Goa presents AUTOPOIESIS: A Song for Resuscitation, curated by Shaunak Mahbubani, featuring works by six artists from peninsular South Asia: Jahangir Jani, Sajan Mani, Saviya Lopes, Imaad Majeed, Jovita Alvarez, and Priyageetha Dia. The exhibition opens on 6 December 2025 from 6:30–9:00 pm with a live sonic set by Imaad Majeed and remains on view until 1 March 2026, Tuesday to Sunday, 11 am–7 pm. It highlights the auto-narrative turn in South Asian art, where artists draw from personal, ancestral, and communal histories to challenge ethnographic tropes and exoticization.
Exhibition Focus
The show extends Sylvia Wynter’s “autopoetic turn” concept, positioning artists as healers of wounded archives through practices rooted in lived experience. Jahangir Jani’s mixed-media collages and paintings reflect on past Mumbai affairs via spiritual abstraction, building on his pioneering queer representations since the 1990s; the self-taught artist, born 1955 in Mumbai, has held 17 solo shows and received awards like the 2016 Diversity Leadership Award. Sajan Mani’s marked paintings reference Kerala anti-caste poetry, exploring caste, labor, and ecology; he holds the 2025 Villa Romana Prize and 2021 Berlin Art Prize as the first Indian recipient.
About the Artists
Saviya Lopes traces her grandfather’s migration from Vasai to Sierra Leone using textiles, paintings, and objects, informed by her textile-based feminist explorations; a Rachana Sansad graduate, she exhibited at Dakar Biennale and received the 2024 Inlaks–UNIDEE Award. Jovita Alvarez animates Pakistani Christian archives tied to Goa via video and photo sculptures; the 2024 Fulbright MFA graduate from University of Illinois Chicago also won the Imran Mir Art Prize. Priyageetha Dia’s CGI video centers Tamil Dalit oppari lamentations amid caste labor histories; based in The Hague, she showed at 2025 Aichi Triennale and 2024 Venice Biennale collateral. Imaad Majeed documents suppressed Tamil kummi adi music in a sonicscape, performing live at the opening; director of KACHA KACHA platform, they explore post-war Sri Lankan identity.
Curator and Venue
Shaunak Mahbubani, based between Berlin and Mumbai, organizes the AUTOPOIESIS series, previously hosted in Berlin, Mexico City, and New Delhi, emphasizing non-dual futures and epistemic violence. Arthshila Goa, part of Takshila Educational Society’s multi-arts centers, hosts with programming like an 18 December curatorial walkthrough.
Cover Image: Jahangir Jani, Learnings 2, Mixed Media Painting on Board, 24×36 in, 2025
Athmaja Biju is the Editor at Abir Pothi. She is a Translator and Writer working on Visual Culture.
