Glasgow School of Art - Afterlives: The Weaver, A Score, An Archipelago

Inspired by the l theme of ‘social justice’, this group exhibition brings together artists whose work engages with Southeast Asian legacies of the Commonwealth. Focusing on practices that draw from archival materials and oral histories, the exhibition approaches history as partial, contested, and continually reworked, and considers how contemporary artists revisit and reframe inherited narratives to uncover obscured or marginalised histories. The works aim to sensitively deal with routes to a just future through acknowledgement of individual histories. This exhibition includes Gogularaajan Rajendran’s film 'Coolie’s Chorus' (2023) that draws on Tamil plantation songs to foreground the lived experiences of indentured labourers, revealing how collective memory persists through voice and performance. The works on display trace the enduring impacts of colonial systems, particularly in relation to labour, migration, and plantation logics while attending to the ways these histories continue to shape cultural memory today. The exhibition is curated by Alaya Ang, an artist-curator originally from Singapore, now based in Glasgow. Rooted in community-led and collective modes of working, Alaya’s practice engages with Southeast Asian histories to explore the intersections of home, migration, and ancestral improvisation. Image: 'Processing of rubber at a plantation in Malaysia', 

Venue: Reid Gallery, Glasgow School of Art. 
See venue website for opening hours: Afterlives: The Weaver, A Chorus, An Archipelago | The Glasgow School of Art Exhibitions Department

*Please note the gallery is closed on Monday 20th July

Photo: C.J. Kleingrothe, circa 1910.