In a culture obsessed with rapid-fire imagery and algorithmic noise, Amar Kanwar asks us to do the most radical thing possible: stop, sit in the dark, and truly look. For over two decades, the New Delhi-based artist and filmmaker has forged a deeply lyrical moving-image language, turning cinema into a sacred archive of historical trauma, political upheaval, and human survival across the Indian subcontinent.
Opening at Serpentine North and running through January 31, 2027, Kanwar’s major solo exhibition transforms the gallery into a sprawling, immersive sanctuary of memory. Bringing together three pivotal works spanning nearly a decade, the exhibition traces the lingering, brutal ghosts of decolonisation, the Partition of India and Pakistan, and ongoing fights for social justice.
At the heart of the show sits the world premiere of The Charcoal Man (2026), a monumental seven-screen installation that surrounds visitors with layered visual and sonic fragments.
“Film isn’t just something to passively consume—it is an open, living room for grief, resistance, and collective memory.”
The immersive centerpieces are joined by Such a Morning (2017)—a haunting fable following a mathematics professor who retreats into total darkness after losing his grip on a broken world—and The Peacock’s Graveyard (2023), a multi-screen visual poem exploring personal loss and political reality.
Eighteen years after his inclusion in Serpentine’s landmark Indian Highway group show, Kanwar’s return proves that true political art doesn’t shout—it whispers, reverberates, and refuses to let history be forgotten.
