Brooklyn-based artist Suneil Sanzgiri’s research-driven practice considers questions of inheritance and diaspora in relation to histories of structural violence and anti-colonial struggle. His experimental film and video projects, installations, and essays explore image-making, collective memory, and testimony, often in dialogue with the works of filmmakers, historians, poets, and activists.

In these new billboard works, part of an ongoing project of the same name (2023– ), Sanzgiri presents a set of two digital images in a cinematic shot/reverse shot composition. The scenes show the two faces of a billowing red banner stretched between two posts, seemingly rising from the swell of an open ocean against the angled light of a low sun. Anchored to an unseen ground, the banner’s two faces bear the words of the late Kashmiri-American poet Agha Shahid Ali. 

On one billboard in bold capital letters, the banner reads, “Your history gets in the way of my memory,” while the text seen on the other billboard reads in reverse, “My memory is again in the way of your history.” Referencing the poem “Farewell,” these images speak to ideas of disappearance, erasure, and forgetting that were central themes in Shahid Ali’s oeuvre, and consider the role of language operating in the public realm during moments of refusal and contestation.

Presented by CONTACT in partnership with Mercer Union; Supported by Pattison Outdoor Advertising.

Curated by Aamna Muzaffar

• Suneil Sanzgiri is an artist, researcher, and filmmaker. His first institutional solo exhibition Here the Earth Grows Gold opened at the Brooklyn Museum in October 2023. His award-winning films have circulated widely at film festivals and art institutions across the world including Mass MoCA, Massachusetts (2024); Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio (2024); de Appel, Amsterdam (2024); Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh (2024); Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai (2024); BFI London Film Festival (2024); Blackstar Film Festival, Philadelphia (2020 - 2024); e-Flux, New York (2023); moCa Cleveland (2022); The Menil Collection, Houston (2022); International Film Festival Rotterdam (2020 - 2022); Viennale (2021); Open City Docs, London (2021); New York Film Festival (2020); and many more.

• Aamna Muzaffar is the Curator & Head of Exhibitions at Mercer Union, a centre for contemporary art.