9 volumes from the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi

Overview

Simryn Gill’s work for Sharjah Biennial 9, as its title suggests, was created from nine volumes of The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. Gill found the books, which were part of a much larger series published by the government of India in 1969, in a library sale held by Sydney University. She dismantled the books and reformed them into nine small spheres. The work was installed in Sharjah Art Museum and viewers were encouraged to pick up and handle the spheres, which were scattered across the gallery floor.

Gill’s projects have often focused on the presentation and transformation of found objects to examine relationships between culture, knowledge and place. Her transformation of these books – communicators of knowledge – into unreadable aesthetic objects relates to the legacy of museums as institutions of colonialism. The movable spheres suggest transient histories and the fluidity of materials and meanings. As a consequence they question notions of rigidity related to the coherence of systems that humans create.


This project was part of Sharjah Biennial 9