The Ishara Art Foundation in Dubai has brought together three artists from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh in an exhibition that treats environments as repositories of history, according to a report published by Dawn newspaper on October 24, 2026. Titled “The sky held it, the earth remembered,” the show presented in collaboration with the Han Nefkens Foundation poses questions about the purpose of art through works that engage with submerged landscapes, urban transformation and celestial phenomena. Its curatorial approach highlights material traces of change across deep time that often remain beyond direct human perception, linking the artists’ disparate practices around themes of land, water and cosmos.
Shahana Rajani, a Karachi-based artist and recipient of the inaugural Han Nefkens Foundation South Asian Video Art Production Grant, occupies the exhibition’s center with her three-channel film “Lines That World a River.” The installation expands on her earlier piece “Four Acts of Recovery” and depicts communities in the Indus Delta reconstructing submerged villages through painting after displacement by dams and barrages, the Dawn report stated. Painted images of houses, boats, winding creeks and shrines serve as remembered landscapes of places no longer inhabitable in their original form. A World Bank assessment from 2022 found that reduced river flows have caused the Indus Delta to lose more than 40 percent of its original wetlands since the 1960s, providing context for the ecological pressures documented in Rajani’s work.
Rohini Devasher from India contributes pieces that capture phenomena unfolding across the sun’s surface, framing the star as an immense archive of deep time that connects to broader questions of memory and perception. Her practice draws on astronomical imaging to reveal patterns and events that span millennia, situating human history within larger cosmic scales, according to details in the exhibition coverage. This celestial perspective complements the terrestrial focus of the other artists by suggesting memory can reside in entities far beyond earthly boundaries.
Sarker Protick from Bangladesh examines a city in flux, documenting block-by-block changes in Dhaka where rapid urban development and water pressures overwrite layers of personal and communal history. His works capture how built environments absorb and obscure traces of the past, aligning with the show’s premise that landscapes function as active archives, the Dawn article explained. Bangladesh government statistics indicate that Dhaka’s urban population has grown by more than 3 million residents per decade since 2010, intensifying the transformations Protick records.
The Han Nefkens Foundation, which supported Rajani’s production, has focused since its establishment on advancing video and time-based art from South Asia, according to foundation records. Ishara Art Foundation, established in the United Arab Emirates, has hosted multiple exhibitions promoting dialogue among regional practitioners, with this show marking a continued emphasis on cross-border collaborations between Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. Previous similar exhibitions, including a 2025 display at London’s SOAS Gallery that featured emerging South Asian voices on intertwined histories, have likewise used art to address shared regional concerns over ecology and memory.
Exhibition viewers are invited to draw connections across the installations, where the absence of explicit answers to the central question of art’s purpose encourages individual interpretation of the living archives on display. The show remains on view at the Ishara Art Foundation in Dubai, where it continues to attract audiences interested in contemporary practices that intersect with environmental narratives across South Asia.
