Regan Dockery: Your work is represented in both sections of the exhibition, the archival “Shadows Dance Within the Archives” and the thematic, contemporary “Are Shadow Bodies Electric?” I am curious about your experience with being involved in such a groundbreaking archival exhibition.
Amay Kataria: Although spearheaded by Shireen and Afzal Ahmad at the South Asia Institute (SAI) in Chicago, this project was intimately touched by the South Asian American community. My first encounter with the project was back in 2023 when SAI was invited to participate in the Terra Foundation’s Art Design Chicago 2024 program. Aiming to capture the vibrant history and experiences of artists and arts professionals within Chicago’s arts community, SAI kicked off the project by hosting a community meeting. This gathering extended an invitation to virtually every South Asian American arts professional with ties to Chicago. This call to collect an archival history reverberated through the arts circuit, with curator Shelly Bahl and art historian Anita Sharma undertaking the herculean effort of weaving this material into a compelling narrative for the audience.
As an artist honing his craft in Chicago for several years, I contributed archival material from my past exhibitions in the city, including “Moment of Enigma” (2020), “Supersynthesis” (2022) and “World That Awaits” (2022). This contribution led to a studio visit with Shelly Bahl, pulling me into the contemporary half of the exhibition. It’s been a profoundly humbling experience to be a part of this ambitious endeavor to reconcile and showcase this historical canon of South Asian art to the city of Chicago. Being placed in dialogue with notable luminaries like Dr. Ananda K Coomaraswamy, Rabindranath Tagore and artists such as Ravi Shankar and Lala Rukh, who have greatly enriched the history of South Asian counterculture in Chicago and across the United States, is quite astounding.
In my perspective, the entire archival collection reaffirms the narrative of how Chicago has served as a melting pot for diverse cultural expressions and continues to fortify its position in the world. The seamless flow between the exhibitions, “Shadows Dance Within the Archives” and “Are Shadow Bodies Electric,” illustrates how the past intertwines with the present, also offering a peek into the potential trajectory of the future.
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