Sreshta Rit Premnath

The word “knot” describes a difficult problem, a fastening, or an uncomfortable mass, tightness or tension. Sreshta Rit Premnath charts his artistic practice through the multiple definitions of this term: it is a making-visible of knots. The artist’s solo exhibition, Those Who Wait, at the Contemporary Art Gallery — his first in Canada — offered an occasion to consider the particular knots that have bound his practice for the past six years: the contradiction between the occupation and ownership of space, and the conditions of visibility and mis-recognition that define migrant experience. Drawing a line through a series of material, conceptual and written propositions articulated across numerous exhibition projects, and punctuated by astute contributions by US-based critical theory scholar Avram Alpert and Brazilian writer and curator Tiago de Abreu Pinto, this book offers an archive of these investigations.