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Extinguishing Hope

A dramatic cinematic scene featuring a close-up of a person's face in the left foreground, partially illuminated by dim lighting. Their gaze is directed toward the background, where a wreckage is engulfed in flames. The fire casts an orange glow on the wet, rocky terrain. A small snail is perched on a rock in the lower right corner. The setting is a dense, dark forest with hanging vines and rugged cliffs, evoking a tense and mysterious atmosphere.

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.
 
Central to the work is Ahamat’s fraught, fictional, and interspecies relationship with a snail—a recurring character in their works which embodies broader ideas of truth, navigation, and escape. Writer Melissa Ratliff considers the snail as "the artist's maybe alter-ego: an avatar, carbon-based kin, night dweller, hero of defensive adaptations."
 
Drawing from Islamic theology, philosophy and the poetry of language and speech, at the core of Extinguishing Hope is the question: how do we find our way in the dark?

Publication: Extinguishing Hope

Extinguishing Hope is accompanied by a publication featuring new writing by curator Sebastian Henry-Jones, Archie Barry, Bahar Sayed and Mellisa Ratliff, designed by Alexander Tanazefti. The publication will be available for purchase at UTS Gallery.

Extinguishing Hope

$15

24 pages, 20 x 29 cm, softcover
Edition of 300
Editor: Sebastian Henry-Jones
Design: Alexander Tanazefti
Published by West Space and UTS Gallery

 

About the artist

Akil Ahamat is a Sri Lankan Malay artist and filmmaker currently based on Gadigal Country. In their work, they animate the non-human in order to talk to it. In the crinkles and whispers of these conversations, shapes of the inhuman forces that govern our lives emerge, as well as our relationships to them.

Recent group exhibitions include Distance is a blade, The Physics Room, Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand; The Churchie Emerging Art Prize 2021, Institute of Modern Art, Meanjin/Brisbane; Language Is a River, Monash University Museum of Art, Naarm/Melbourne; and After Technology, UTS Gallery, Gadigal/Sydney. Ahamat was shortlisted for the NSW Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship (2020) and was the recipient of the John Fries Award, UNSW Galleries, Gadigal/Sydney (2018). In 2024, Ahamat was awarded the Contemporary Fisher’s Ghost Art Award for their collaborative work with artist Kalanjay Dhir, a vanishing point (2024), presented at Campbelltown Arts Centre, Dharawal Country/Campbelltown.

Ahamat is a current Clothing Store studio resident at Carriageworks, Gadigal/Sydney.

About the curator

Sebastian Henry-Jones' curatorial approach is led by an interest in DIY thinking, and situated in the context provided by the gentrification of Sydney and Melbourne’s cultural landscapes.

Sebastian is the Curator at West Space, having worked as a Curatorial Assistant for the 22nd and 23rd editions of the Biennale of Sydney, NIRIN and Rivus and as guest curator for the 2023 Churchie Emerging Art Prize at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane. Sebastian has staged group exhibitions and independent projects across the East Coast of the continent. He is a co-founder of DIY and experimental arts platforms Desire Lines and Emerson, and former editor at Runway Journal. 

Gallery directions

UTS Gallery

Level 4, Peter Johnson Building (Building 6)
702 Harris St, Ultimo,
University of Technology, Sydney

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Extinguishing Hope is a West Space Commission, supported by Creative Australia and presented in partnership with UTS Gallery. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication designed by Alex Tanazefti.

Lockup for West Space and Creative Australia

Banner image: Akil Ahamat, Extinguishing Hope, 2024 (moving image still) © Akil Ahamat 2024. Courtesy the artist.