The debut solo presentation of Akil Ahamat’s practice, Extinguishing Hope draws from big and small screen cinematic languages to produce a non-narrative atmosphere described as ‘slow cinema for short attention spans.’
The exhibition, curated by Sebastian Henry-Jones, features a multi-screen and immersive installation that explores the aesthetics and psychosocial affects of ever-unfolding disaster.
Built in a gaming engine, Extinguishing Hope uses darkness as a motif to represent our age of hyper-rationality, producing an excess of truth that is impossible to make sense of. A key text for the exhibition is the canonical Javanese poem Kidung Rumeksa Ing Wengi (Song guarding in the night), attributed to Sunan Kalijaga, one of the nine saints of Javanese Islam. This prayer describes threats both earthly and spiritual and has journeyed from Java to Sri Lanka along with the exile of Malay peoples—Ahamat’s extended diasporic community—as an incantation for protection against the dangers of life in exile.
Central to the work is Ahamat’s fraught, fictional, and interspecies relationship with a snail—a recurring character in their works which embodies broader ideas of truth, navigation, and escape. Writer Melissa Ratliff considers the snail as "the artist's maybe alter-ego: an avatar, carbon-based kin, night dweller, hero of defensive adaptations."
Drawing from Islamic theology, philosophy and the poetry of language and speech, at the core of Extinguishing Hope is the question: how do we find our way in the dark?
Publication: Extinguishing Hope
About the artist
About the curator
Gallery directions
Extinguishing Hope is a West Space Commission, supported by Creative Australia and presented in partnership with UTS Gallery. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication designed by Alex Tanazefti.
Banner image: Akil Ahamat, Extinguishing Hope, 2024 (moving image still) © Akil Ahamat 2024. Courtesy the artist.