What does it mean to live in a world characterized by constant physical, emotional and psychological transformations? Be it through the instrument of climate change, humanity’s unstoppable interferences with nature, or in the name of socio-economic development, who is left behind amidst the chaos of change? What stays when things change, and what is lost?

These are some of the questions that I grappled with when immersing myself in the Art Gallery’s ongoing exhibition, the only constant. Mobilizing a myriad of artistic textures and technological tools, the exhibition poignantly illustrates the perpetuity of change. It gives a voice to forgotten remnants and lost imaginations, tracing our fantasies and idealisms of modernity and how they contend with our lived realities. Understanding change as an unrelenting process and the only thing that is permanent in a world in-flux, the exhibition takes one on an epic journey that documents the possibilities of utopian imagination, and the processes of locating paradise in a world ravaged by increasing technological and human intervention.

Photo Courtesy of Ibad Hasan

This dichotomy between utopia and paradise is central to the exhibition. Opening with a larger than life photograph of Australia's Daintree rainforest by Thomas Struth, entitled New Pictures from Paradise, the exhibition situates us in nature from the get-go. Paradise, in Struth’s world, exists in the present, instead of being a relic of a past. While it may inspire a mythical imagination, it is not mythical in its origin or existence: it can be found within our current tangible reality even if it’s physically distant from our contemporary cityscapes. With this image, the exhibition’s understanding of paradise starts to form; paradise is characterized within the present, in our oversight of nature and its diversity.

Curated by Maya Allison, the exhibition, in its essence, serves as a homage to the memory of Professor Tarek Al-Ghoussein, a beloved teacher at NYUAD, who passed away last year. Inspired by Al Sawaber, a photography series by Al-Ghoussein archiving the demolition of a modern apartment building complex in Kuwait and the eventual relocation of its residents, also featured in the exhibition. Al Sawaber is a fascinating piece to observe. In a parallel fashion, it showcases the harsh shadows of the building complex constructed by its futuristic facade alongside the interior realities of the people who actually lived inside the apartment. These physical realities could not be more different. What looks like a highly curated and beautifully symmetrical concrete structure on the outside, harbors complex and messy psychological realities inside. The residents of the apartment paint the insides of their walls with visions of nature, which through their drawings, feels like a distant imagination.

Photo Courtesy of Ibad Hasan

The idea of artificial utopias around us being disrupted by the psychological and physical truths of one’s lived experience pervades throughout the exhibition. Al-Ghoussein’s piece in itself deconstructs this conflict of a utopian urban setting with peoples’ own lived experience within such settings through a simple observational narrative. By documenting these abandoned apartments, which the residents were forced to leave within three days due to an imposed demolition order, Al-Ghoussein explores how modernist utopias only function for the sake of public facade. What looks like a story of capitalist infrastructure-based success on the outside is actually a narrative of personal dislocation and abandonment. Herein, a public indicator of development is a private signifier of loss; of home, family, and stability. The image of a wall painting of a tree against a backdrop of peeling paint is particularly haunting.

The vestiges of such human-driven processes, deriving a change in the natural landscape around us, is also a recurring symbol in the exhibition. Herein, Vivek Vilasani’s City Fifth Investigation exposed rice paper to the atmosphere in Delhi for 31 data points to show the effects of atmospheric pollutants. Each paper, framed singularly, represents a different level of exposure to the atmosphere, with each passing day. Using photographic ideas of exposure, the installation’s scientific process produces a stunning visual library of gradually darkening sheets of paper. By translating something relatively invisible such as the air quality around us into a materially visible form, afflicted by the crisis of pollution, the traces left on these sheets implored me to overcome the desensitization to issues of pollution that we have all gotten used to.

Photo Courtesy of Ibad Hasan

Equally engaging were the moments in which the exhibition invited us to pause and witness through meditation. Patty Chang’s Invocation for a Wandering Lake invited observers to reflect on what it means to grieve personally when one is juxtaposed against a vast and overwhelming landscape. The video projects itself on a cardboard bifold panel in which Chang engages in what feels like a surreal ceremonial death ritual, of washing a dead whale and an old shipwreck with her hands. The boat, rusted and abandoned, sits on the dry sea bed of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan and the expansive dead body of the whale resides amidst crashing sea-waves. By situating these hollow agents in their natural settings, one that has rendered them dead or inactive, the installation organizes an emotional process for us to witness, one that is stretched out in both time and space.

Across various artistic mediums, the only constant foregrounded many images, visions, imaginations and ideas that often get lost amidst the speed and movement that we have come to characterize our world with. Through this exhibition, not only is change documented as a physical concept, but it is also imbued with personal and psychological dimensions that we don’t often see attached to it, due to its abstract connotations.