Archive2021

Sohrab Hura

Sohrab Hura, The Coast (series), 2019. Installation view at Lewis's Building, Liverpool Biennial 2021. Photography: Rob Battersby

Sohrab Hura, The Coast (series), 2020. Installation view at Lewis's Building, Liverpool Biennial 2021. Photography: Ben Nuttall

Sohrab Hura, The Coast (series), 2020. Installation view at Lewis's Building, Liverpool Biennial 2021. Photography: Ben Nuttall

Sohrab Hura, The Coast (series), 2020. Installation view at Lewis's Building, Liverpool Biennial 2021. Photography: Ben Nuttall

Sohrab Hura, The Lost Head and Bird, 2017. Installation view at Lewis's Building, Liverpool Biennial 2021. Photography: Ben Nuttall


Sohrab Hura, The parrot and its fortune teller, 2015. Photo: Sohrab Hura

Sohrab Hura, Magicians, 2018. Photo: Sohrab Hura

Sohrab Hura, The Fight, 2017. Photo: Sohrab Hura

Sohrab Hura, Lips, 2018. Photo: Sohrab Hura

Sohrab Hura, The Coast (series), 2019. Installation view at Lewis's Building, Liverpool Biennial 2021. Photography: Rob Battersby

Sohrab Hura (b. 1981, West Bengal, India) lives and works in New Delhi, India. Hura uses an autobiographical approach to engage with the wider world through publications, photography, film, text and sound. His early work explores his relationship with his mother who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, while his recent work reflects the volatility of contemporary India. In his recent series, the vivid and startling images depict moments that seem out of control, slapstick and hallucinatory. Recent exhibitions and screenings include Museum of Modern Art, New York (2020); Cincinnati Art Museum, USA (2019); Kettle’s Yard, UK (2019); Videonale.17, Germany (2019); and Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Germany (2020/2018).

Project Description

Sohrab Hura presented a multi-media installation combining film, photography, print and text at The Lewis’s Building. Hura’s film The Lost Head and the Bird (2017)was shown alongside photography from his The Coast (2020) series with a corresponding audio-visual work and text. Hura’s hyperreal photography blurs the line between documentary and fiction, bringing into question whose truth is being told, who sets the narrative and for what purpose. Using the Indian coastline as a metaphor, his photographs veer from violent scenes to religious rituals to the absurdity in everyday life – the viewer is never sure what is staged and what is real in Hura’s world. His photographic work is set against an audio-visual installation centred around the sound of waves and visuals of bathers in the sea at night which reflect the intensity of his images and the moments of violent and spiritual release that they portray. 

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