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Vedika Rampal, ‘Forms of a Fermenting Fantasy,’ 2023. Copper prints, 80 x 160 x 360cm. Image courtesy: Christopher Mulia.

This installation renders the artist’s post-colonial encounter with the pre-colonial paintings found in the Ajanta Caves, (2-6th BCE, Maharashtra, India). It proposes a collapse of linear temporality, rendering instead a simultaneity of excavations, the original, the colonial and the contemporary. To excavate, after all, means not only to unearth in the archaeological sense but also ‘to make’ and ‘to form into’ through hollowing. G.W.F Hegel once denounced all Indian art as the ‘forms of a fermenting fantasy,’ — the work echoes his words back to him.

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Acknowledgement of Country

UNSW School of Art & Design stands on an important place of learning and exchange first occupied by the Bidjigal and Gadigal peoples.

We acknowledge the Bidjigal and Gadigal peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land that our students and staff share, create and operate on. We pay our respects to Elders past and present and extend this respect to all First Nations peoples across Australia. Sovereignty has never been ceded.