Ahmad Fuad Osman: Archipelagic Alchemy : Curated by Carlos Quijon Jr.
Past exhibition
Installation Views
Overview
A+ is delighted to announce our latest exhibition from Carlos Quijon, Jr's traveling exhibition series Archipelagic Futurisms!
Ahmad Fuad Osman: Archipelagic Alchemy is the second exhibition in the traveling exhibition series which was first presented at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) Project Space in New York from 12 December 2023 to 26 April 2024. This series proposes a curriculum for thinking about how archipelagic conditions and dispositions can help rethink how we imagine global contemporaries and futures.
Ahmad Fuad Osman: Archipelagic Alchemy looks at the archipelagic as a framework of coloniality and futurism. Conceptualizing the history of empire as a history of carving the world into precious fragments and delineating relationships between seas and among islands. The exhibition focuses on an episode of colonial history involving the exchange of two islands: New Netherland (present-day Manhattan) and Pulau Run (one of the Spice Islands, present-day Maluku Islands). The island trade, wherein the English-owned Pulau Run was exchanged for the then Dutch-owned island of Manhattan took place in the 17th century, is one of the provisions of the Treaty of Breda, signed by the Dutch and the English to put an end to the Second Anglo-Dutch War. Presenting a newly commissioned speculative documentary, a selection of archival materials collected by Osman, Archipelagic Alchemy plays out a postcolonial refraction of this lesser known historical moment. Through Osman’s reconsideration of this interchange of islands we find a futurist conjecture: the possibility of another time in which thresholds of rethinking the composition of the world reveal themselves and people are enjoined to reimagine our places in it.
This new iteration of Archipelagic Alchemy presented in Kuala Lumpur will also include objects and colonial paraphernalia from the artist’s personal collection.
Ahmad Fuad Osman: Archipelagic Alchemy is the second exhibition in the traveling exhibition series which was first presented at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) Project Space in New York from 12 December 2023 to 26 April 2024. This series proposes a curriculum for thinking about how archipelagic conditions and dispositions can help rethink how we imagine global contemporaries and futures.
Ahmad Fuad Osman: Archipelagic Alchemy looks at the archipelagic as a framework of coloniality and futurism. Conceptualizing the history of empire as a history of carving the world into precious fragments and delineating relationships between seas and among islands. The exhibition focuses on an episode of colonial history involving the exchange of two islands: New Netherland (present-day Manhattan) and Pulau Run (one of the Spice Islands, present-day Maluku Islands). The island trade, wherein the English-owned Pulau Run was exchanged for the then Dutch-owned island of Manhattan took place in the 17th century, is one of the provisions of the Treaty of Breda, signed by the Dutch and the English to put an end to the Second Anglo-Dutch War. Presenting a newly commissioned speculative documentary, a selection of archival materials collected by Osman, Archipelagic Alchemy plays out a postcolonial refraction of this lesser known historical moment. Through Osman’s reconsideration of this interchange of islands we find a futurist conjecture: the possibility of another time in which thresholds of rethinking the composition of the world reveal themselves and people are enjoined to reimagine our places in it.
This new iteration of Archipelagic Alchemy presented in Kuala Lumpur will also include objects and colonial paraphernalia from the artist’s personal collection.
