Jitish Kallat: Tangled Hierarchy 2

Tangled Hierarchy 2 is an exhibition that centres on a collection of five humble yet remarkable used envelopes. Each envelope is addressed to Mahatma Gandhi and is now conserved within the Mountbatten Archive at the University of Southampton. Combining archival and scientific artefacts, alongside works by contemporary artists, Tangled Hierarchy explores the various relationships between silence and speech, visibility and invisibility, partitioned land, bodies, and pain. Themes of maps, borders, recurring cycles and unsettling displacement are woven throughout the exhibition at Kiran Nadar Museum of Art.

On Monday 2nd June 1947, Mountbatten met with Mahatma Gandhi to discuss the imminent partition of the Indian subcontinent, a proposition strongly opposed by Gandhi. As a consequence of Gandhi undertaking a vow of silence on Mondays, the meeting took an unusual turn. Instead of conversing, he communicated with Mountbatten by writing notes on the backs of used envelopes, which are now the only surviving record of their exchange. Kallat takes the ‘Gandhi envelopes’ as a reference point for a series of artistic conversations and correspondences.