The Exhaustion Project

Abhijan Toto

David Elliott

Kolkata-based curator Abhijan Toto presents a curatorial project that marks the culmination of the series of artistic interrogations titled The Exhaustion Project, in which he probes the relationship between labor, self-care, and the exhausted body with artists Eglė Budvytytė (LT, NL), Alisa Chunchue (TH), Jessika Khazrik (LB), Sarah Naqvi (IN), and Anna Ridler (GB). The project examines what potential for subversion becomes imaginable and accessible through communal exhaustion.

Anna Ridler performed the labor of arranging hundreds of photos of tulips on a wall, rendering visible the human effort that goes into training AI. Photo: Laura Fiorio.

During Toto’s mentorship with curator David Elliott, in the category Looking, their discussions revolved around the concept of power, how it might be approached under different cultural and political conditions, and what subversion might mean in various contexts. What happens when political actions influence each other and coalesce? Out of these considerations, the notion of entanglement became the central concern for the curatorial project: Despite working in a variety of media and different practices, each participating artist proposes a model of the body as already entangled with human and nonhuman others.

A performance piece by Eglė Budvytytėby on the HKW’s terrace. Photo: Laura Fiorio.

Eglė Budvytytė collaborated with Berlin-based dancers on a piece titled Shakers, Lovers, Bystanders. Photo: Laura Fiorio.

The festival kicked off with an open-air performance on the HKW’s terrace by artist Eglė Budvytytė. Photo: Laura Fiorio.

By casting the body as something that is not singular but rather entangled, the artists in the show conjure new possibilities of being and moving in multitudes to create an alternative score for performing the present. Within the curatorial project, the works mutate into an investigation of modes of acting from this position, and producing a space of agency beyond exhaustion through intimacy and care.

Sarah Naqvi’s soft sculptures were displayed in bell jars on an adjacent table. Photo: Laura Fiorio.

Alisa Chunchue’s mixed-media work Overdose (2018), which looks at the condition of being a medical patient, was represented through a video and artist book. Photo: Laura Fiorio.

Alisa Chunchue, Overdose, (film still), 2018. Courtesy of the artist.

The Exhaustion Project is supported by the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Mondriaan Fund, the Lithuanian Culture Institute, the Goethe-Institut London, the Goethe-Institut Max Mueller Bhavan Kolkata, the Goethe-Institut Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai, and the British Council.