Public involvement is never an afterthought for Indian artist Jitish Kallat, who often plays with participatory and public art in his work. In his 2007 installation “Public notice 2”, the planks contain 4,479 resin letters that mimic the bones that formed Mohandas Gandhi’s 1930 speech for the historic 290 miles. Dandi Marchand invited visitors to revisit these words almost a century later.
Kallat’s most recent project, Antumbrainitially took the form of a participatory installation at the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA) presentation at the India Art Fair 2024 in Delhi earlier this year. Kallat’s aim was to actively engage audiences in the life of South African leader Nelson Mandela, whose legacy of anti-apartheid activism resonates with the ongoing struggle for justice across India and South Asia. Scans of Mandela’s diary entries on his desk from 1976 to 1989 were blurredly projected onto the walls and floor of a darkened room, immersing visitors in his daily routines, interactions and even blood pressure logs during his decades-long incarceration in South Africa. Meticulous record keeping is just one of many habits Mandela practiced in his cell, including writing letters and an autobiography, studying, reading and building connections with other anti-apartheid activists imprisoned alongside him. The picturesque hills, greenery, flora, meadows and beaches as photographed in the desk calendars produced by the National Tourism Department are all accompanied by the phrase “It is sunny in South Africa today.”
Curator Sukanya Baskar designed a book that was published by FICA in September and that preserves Antumbra in one physical formatwhich collects images of the installation, an essay by art historian Beth Citron and a transcript of a conversation between Kallat and the legal professional Albie Sachs, whom Mandela appointed as a judge at the Constitutional Court of South Africa in 1994. In their conversation, Kallat and Sachs discuss the importance of the seemingly routine calendar images for the study of Apartheid.
Baskar said Hyperallergic that for her, the Editorial font was crucial in expanding notions of social versus legal definitions of justice. It was developed in 2019 by visual artist and filmmaker Titus Kaphar and memoirist, poet and lawyer Reginald Dwayne Betts to highlight ways in which legal systems often edit and erase conflicting accounts, which is especially appropriate as the book combines the conversation between Kallat and Sachs with scans of Mandela’s desk agenda- items in his own handwriting.
Bound, Antumbra greets us with an overwhelming darkness on the cover and on the pages, reminiscent of the many prison cells Mandela would have inhabited. The spiral-bound book is designed to stand like a regular desk calendar, and you can flip to any page you come across Antumbra through Kallat’s eyes.
One message from August 1989 reads: ‘Visited for three hours by Mamphela Ramphele’, referring to Mandela’s meeting with the South African activist and politician, whose late partner Steve Biko. Above the grid is a saturated photo of a wide open area in the Namaqualand region, captured lushly in spring.
Another week from April 1976, just months before the Uprising in Soweto led by black South African students in response to legislation mandating the use of Afrikaans and English by teachers, contains only two scribbled notes. The image above, an artwork by white South African painter JH Pierneef, captures the rugged beauty of the Great Escarpment rock formation, whose appearance here feels decidedly sinister.
Mandela also sporadically recorded his blood pressure alongside records of his activities, with some months covered in notes and others left largely blank. Certain installation photographs attempt to maintain their scale without overshadowing the focus on keeping a desk calendar, a deceptively mundane ritual whose intimacy gives us both a new understanding of Mandela’s inner life and of the everyday archival objects that speak to societal structures of violence and injustice .
