Description
Curated by Natasha Ginwala, this international exhibition brings together 21 artists from Central Asia and other regions of the world.
In many languages, the word "Himoya" means protection, shelter, and guardianship. The exhibition turns to ancestral wisdom, matrilineal memory, female kinship, and spiritual practices (Tengrian, Sufi, Zoroastrian, and shamanic) as ways of protection and cultural continuity. The artists address colonial contradictions and lost languages and rituals, and imagine a shared future free of imperial legacies.
The exhibition features newly commissioned works alongside existing pieces. The scenography by Diogo Passarinho Studio transforms the former Soviet cinema into a layered landscape of memory and collective experience. A research and public programme accompanies the exhibition.
Natasha Ginwala was co-curator of the 16th Sharjah Biennial and one of the artistic directors of the 13th Gwangju Biennale, and contributed to documenta 14 and the Berlin Biennale.