Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale | After Rain - Priyageetha Dia

DIRIYAH BIENNALE FOUNDATION, February 20, 2024
Takes place in the JAX District in Diriyah, a town adjacent to the capital city of Riyadh and home to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of At-Turaif. The curatorial team of the 2024 Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale is led by globally renowned curator Ute Meta Bauer as Artistic Director and comprised of DBF curator Wejdan Reda(SA) and curators Rahul Gudipudi(IN), Rose Lejeune(UK), and Anca Rujoiu(RO). Together, they bring experiences and insights from diverse geographic backgrounds, extending the Biennale exhibition with artistic formats such as performance, sound, research-based practices, and digital forms.
 

Priyageetha Dia is an artist, whose work addresses the plantation histories of Southeast Asia and their contemporary legacies. Working with computer-generated imagery (CGI), she traces the links between technology, labour, and environmental destruction. She is a recipient of the IMPART Artist Award by Art Outreach Singapore in 2019. 


Spectre System examines plantation corporatism and labour migration on the Malay Peninsula. Formerly one of the British Empire’s most profitable colonies, Malaya relied on indentured workers from South India. A computer-generated protagonist reveals this terrain as a repository of memory and site of racialised dispossession. The animation extends into the physical space through a large vinyl print on the wall, Mesh: Prelude to Spectre System, in which elongated hands with gleaming skin seem to guide, embrace, or entrap viewers. Through this immersive image the artist strives to dissolve the boundaries between the body and space and reveal the environment we inhabit as a container of countless histories and handprints. 

 

After Rain, Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2024, Priyageetha Dia, Mesh: Prelude to Spectre System (2024), Vinyl print, Dimensions variable, Courtesy of the Diriyah Biennale Foundation, photo by Marco Cappelletti

 

 
 

Spectre System, 2024

Single-channel video, colour and sound, 15 min 

Courtesy of the artist and Han Nefkens Foundation, Barcelona 

Commissioned by Han Nefkens Foundation for the Diriyah Contemporary Art Beinnale 2024 


Mesh: Prelude to Spectre System, 2024 

Vinyl print 

Courtesy of the artist