Revolution is a ghost, it is a reality, it is an illusion. Etymologically, it refers us to the act of resisting but also to the movement of time, a revolution of the earth around the sun, an eternal return. Revolution is the political search for time. A radical social and political change means the beginning of a new era. A revolution marks a change in the calendar. Nonetheless, a revolution is not only the big gestures, the seizes of power, the grand speeches. A revolution is crafted by the everyday action, by the walking of the feet, the writing of the ideas, the cooking of the food, the movement of the people. How then to remember what has not yet ended? Can there ever be a revolution that is complete? The revolution that doesn’t end is the one that continues to search, that continues to build and challenge itself; or the one that was silenced, stopped, destroyed. That which needs to be retaken, remembered in action. Dr. Ambedkar wrote, “The wheel of revolution has turned only half. There can be no revolution without turning the wheel fully. We shall turn this wheel fully round.” The exhibition Revolutionary Remembrance is part of the artistic research project Commemorating a Revolution Yet to Come supported by FWF PEEK and led by filmmaker Ujjwal Kanishka Utkarsh. The project seeks to problematize the politics of remembrance by taking as its focal point the revolutionary act of Dr. Ambedkar, who in 1927 led people from the lowest caste to drink water from a well which was socially forbidden for them in the Hindu religio-social system. Considered to be his first protest, Dr. Ambedkar initiated this radical action in the small town of Mahad in the Central Western Indian state of Maharashtra. Commemorated every year on March 20th, this radical moment and a homage to it still holds hope for the building of a caste-less society in contemporary India. The celebration of an unfinished revolution.
The exhibition will be split into two phases, one in Mahad and the other in Vienna. During 2025, we will conduct a participatory research in Mahad; the aim is to organize a series of workshops and talks with local and international artists to further discuss our central question on the remembrance of a revolution and the social repercussions of the same.
Anatomy of fragments, 2025
Terracotta, stoneware and mixed media | Variable
Photo credit : Frida Robles
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