November 14 - December 20, 2024
On View at Special Project Space, Museum Plaza
10:00 am - 5:30 pm
Free entry
The Dr Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum is pleased to announce One Hundred Thousand Suns, the debut screening of Rohini Devasher’s compelling and immersive four-channel video installation in India, in collaboration with Project 88.
The focal point of the exhibition, One Hundred Thousand Suns explores four distinct dimensions of the Sun: material, ephemeral, personal, and geographic. Driven by more than 157,000 portraits of our nearest star, observed over 120 years, this audio-visual work centers on the Kodaikanal Solar Observatory in India, where every day since 1901 staff have recorded images of the Sun. Through the observatory’s archival material, combined with public domain images from NASA and the artist’s own data – photographs, drawings, videos, and interviews with eclipse chasers – Devasher explores the complexities of observational astronomy and the ways in which ‘seeing’ is strange, wondrous, and more ambiguous than one might imagine. The exhibition also features Devasher’s Sol Drawings, Shadow Portraits and Skywatch, a series of embellished copper works, adorned with markings inspired by solar phenomena.
Rohini Devasher is the recipient of the Deutsche Bank’s ‘Artist of the Year’ award for 2024. Her rigorous and research-driven body of work chronicles a decade of her practice as an eclipse chaser and amateur astronomer, as she delves into the intersections of science, art, and philosophy. For Devasher, the key to exploring new cosmologies between the human and the non-human lies in examining the interplay between place, observer, and observation. Her work has been shown at the Palaispopulaire, Berlin (2024) Minnesota Street Project Foundation, San Francisco (2024), Kunsthalle Bern, (2024), Museum Catharijneconvent Utrecht, Netherlands (2024), the Open Data Institute London (2022), Rubin Museum, New York (2021- 22), among others. Listen to the Audio Guide
The Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai City Museum seeks to serve the community as an Institution dedicated to excellence in cultural education through exhibitions and unique visual and intellectual media
An Institution of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai. Supported by the Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation. Restored by INTACH, Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage
Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum
Veermata Jijabai Bhosale Botanical Udyan and Zoo (Rani Baug),
91/A, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Road,
Byculla East Mumbai 400027 India
Museum Plaza is located right behind the Museum building
T: +91 22 23741234
10 am - 5:30 pm
