EXTINGUISHING HOPe – UTS GaLLeRY

The debut solo presentation of Akil Ahamat’s practice, Extinguishing Hope draws from big and small screen cinematic languages to produce a non-narrative atmosphere described as ‘slow cinema for short attention spans.’

The exhibition, curated by Sebastian Henry-Jones, features a multi-screen and immersive installation that explores the aesthetics and psychosocial affects of ever-unfolding disaster.

Built in a gaming engine, Extinguishing Hope uses darkness as a motif to represent our age of hyper-rationality, producing an excess of truth that is impossible to make sense of. A key text for the exhibition is the canonical Javanese poem Kidung Rumeksa Ing Wengi (Song guarding in the night), attributed to Sunan Kalijaga, one of the nine saints of Javanese Islam. This prayer describes threats both earthly and spiritual and has journeyed from Java to Sri Lanka along with the exile of Malay peoples—Ahamat’s extended diasporic community—as an incantation for protection against the dangers of life in exile.