Ravi Agarwal (born 1958), Riverbank I , 2007, inkjet print on paper, Gift of Drs. Umesh and Sunanda Gaur, © Ravi Agarwal, S2019.6.4

Unstill Waters: Contemporary Photography from India,
National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution
November 10, 2022-June 11, 2023

Unstill Waters: Contemporary Photography from India features 29 works by some of the most prominent artists working in India. Through photography and video, these artists forefront the landscape of India, both real and imagined, as a powerful means to examine contemporary environmental and social issues of broader global concern. The exhibition will be on view in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery during the museum’s centennial—and celebrates Umesh and Sunanda Gaur’s gift to the museum’s growing collection of contemporary Asian photography.

Visually dynamic in scale and format, the works in Unstill Waters offer vivid perspectives on the human relationship to place. Artists Ketaki Sheth and Gigi Scaria look to the streets of Mumbai and New Delhi as their subjects, while the landscape view becomes a highly symbolic setting for Sheba Chhachhi. Atul Bhalla and Ravi Agarwal convey the profound importance of water, specifically the enduring cultural connection to the Yamuna River in northern India, its current endangered state and the relationship between rivers and rapidly changing urban life. Unstill Waters complements the centennial exhibition A Splendid Land: Paintings from Royal Udaipur.