The interiors of the Neighbor Gallery in Kesavadasapuram, Thiruvananthapuram evoke the image of an ancestral home, divided into several sections, where each member of the family has left something of his own to contemplate. Fallen chairs, scattered passport size photographs, colorful frocks hanging on a panel, and a crude bed to lie down on and watch the exhibition – all remind you of its presence before your arrival. A gloomy soundtrack, interspersed with Bollywood dialogues and exhibitionist narrations, makes the place more mysterious.
Inspired by Bengaluru’s Sunday Market flea market, the Seeds Sprout Dreams exhibition celebrates “the history of cinema as a fragmented art form”, while paying tribute to the grassroots stakeholders participating in cinematic infrastructure such as setting, distribution and preservation. The exhibition is organized by the collective Kaddukkas and curated by filmmakers Anuj Malhotra, Ketan Dua and Mahesh S, while Lakshmapriya SN is heading the production.
Scenes from the Seed Sprouts Dreams Exhibition Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
The exhibition explores informal archives by the people themselves, identifying their own definitions of taste without adhering to Western standards of what is acceptable or not, while touching on topics such as piracy.
Anuj says, “We started the project by looking at how film culture and history was written in the context of India and the rest of South Asia. The exhibition pays homage to the film infrastructure across South Asia. It also features outdoor film screenings and makeshift cinemas built by the people themselves. This project, in a way, tries to bring together these ideas of how cinema history does not need a clear line of events.”
It has six exhibitions placed close to each other. Video is projected onto media, such as textured clothing and monitors.
Kaddukas began work on this exhibition in July 2025, with an open call for South Asian artists or artists of South Asian descent. After the artists were selected, they were asked to play Exclusive Corpus, a surreal game in which participants create works for their performance without looking at previous contributions.
A discussion after the show Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
The first installation from which others were created is called a film continuous darshanCreated by artist Erica Tan. The other artists arranged themselves in an order. “The first artist responds to Persistent Vision, the second artist responds to the first artist’s response and it becomes a chain of reactions,” says Anuj.
Scenes from the Seed Sprouts Dreams Exhibition Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
The film presents a collage of materials from the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum’s image repository, with individual and collective video images flashing across three panels. This marks the beginning of the exhibition.
The artists explore a series of questions about memory, home, folklore, and shared mythologies.
Shraddha Devkota’s exhibition, do you also remember it? Explores the idea of home from a man who lives in 12 different houses. For this work, he revisited the houses and made a film of how these places seem smaller than before.
Fahadh Naveed’s Behind the Scenes: The Neighbors reminds Bollywood’s Nishat Cinema, which was gutted in a fire in Karachi in 2012. The artist uses this phenomenon to represent a sorted collection.
Megan Aranagu Reddy’s can i see?.mp4Depicts an ancient woman who refuses to be photographed. The sources of this footage are unknown. This is followed by a series of more unidentified footage, where the narrator follows a character whose evasiveness is omnipresent.
Lail Ali’s Jinazreen@shine.tv This is a short film about religious lore that endures over time in the digital realm. The work is set in a temple-like environment, surrounded by withered flowers and half-burnt candles. The short film revolves around a local shrine of Sufi saint Meeran Ma in Karachi, and explores the shared beliefs and meanings associated with her.
Ishaan Gupta’s ‘India Is a Law Unto Itself’ is an auditory installation consisting of embroidered chanting boxes, containing a track of Trinidadian musician Lord Shorty’s ‘Om Shanti Om’ as well as other cheap copies, reproductions and homages that the song has generated in India over the years.
The team, led by Mahesh S, arrived at a short narrative that outlined the various ideas present within the space as well as on its walls, its corners, floors and ceilings. Apart from multidisciplinary exhibitions, workshops and discussions are also part of The Seed Sprout Dreams.
Seeds Sprout Dreams is running at Neighbor Gallery in Kesavadasapuram till February 7. Register through the link given in the bio of Instagram handle @lightcube.in
published – January 31, 2026 11:03 am IST