The past is always present in South Asia. It lingers in the air — in renamed and repurposed colonial-era streets and Indo-Saracenic estate houses, in family photo albums and cherished heirlooms from before Partition, and in the very bones of people in the Global South who are still living through the afterlife of colonialism. Less than a hundred years have passed since the Partition of India. Less than a hundred years have passed since many of the post-colonial nations regained their right to self-govern. The remnants of colonialism still shape South Asian culture, literature, identity, and the imaginations of the future.

'(Un)Layering the Future Past of South Asia: Young Artists’ Voices' — organised by the Ravi Jain Memorial Foundation and supported by New Delhi-based Dhoomimal Gallery — is a landmark exhibition that brings together, for the first time, 26 emerging South Asian artists from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal to interrogate the history, memory, and identity of South Asia through a decolonial lens. Curated by Pakistani painter, artist, former college professor, and anti-nuclear weapons activist Salima Hashmi and UK-based art critic, curator, writer, and advocate for South Asian diaspora art Manmeet K. Walia, the exhibition is the first cross-regional collaboration of its scale and will be on view at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Gallery, London, UK, from April 11 to June 21, 2025.

The featured artists — including Bangladesh’s Ayesha Sultana, known for her minimalist meditations on urban decay; India’s Purvai Rai, Soumya Sankar Bose, and Prarthna Singh among others; Sri Lanka's Hema Shironi; Nepal's Amrit Karki; and Afghanistan’s Kubra Khademi, known for her performative explorations of bodily autonomy — employ painting, textile, film, photography, and installation to dissect themes of displacement, resistance, and cultural metamorphosis in their diverse bodies of work. Their works reject monolithic narratives, instead offering fractured, layered perspectives that mirror the region’s socio-political complexities. The exhibition aims to capture the connections, memories, and nostalgia among the neighbouring populace, emphasising the artist's freedom to challenge the prevalent atmosphere and introduce a fresh dialogue through visual arts where individuals can express themselves openly, without limitations, and where all aspects and situations of people's lived experiences can be viewed collectively.

The exhibition reframes decolonisation not as an already-concluded process, but as an evolving, ongoing dialogue between past traumas and future possibilities. These artists aren’t just responding to history — they are deconstructing it, using tradition as a tool to forge new visual languages. By situating South Asia’s emergent voices within a global capital, the landmark exhibition sparks urgent conversations about power, representation, and who gets to script cultural legacies.

In the words of Uday Jain, the director of Dhoomimal Gallery: "Through the show, we are showcasing that artist(s) in any of these regions may be going through similar sorts of experiences, which is what we are trying to find and show."

More than an exhibition, (Un)Layering the Future Past is a manifesto — a call to action. For collectors and critics alike, it offers a rare decolonial and collective lens into the bold, genre-defying work reshaping South Asia as one of the contemporary art world’s most dynamic regions. Here, history is not only displayed, but disassembled and remade.

Learn more about the exhibition here.

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