The Indian artist, who contributed to his country’s pavilion at the Venice Biennial in 2011 and is currently living in Amsterdam, has established a very close relationship with Lisbon, where he has spent some time in preparation for this exhibition. He wandered and explored streets and places such as Mouraria, where various immigrant communities have gathered, while also becoming familiar with the collections of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum.

Based on these meanderings, Soi replicated, recreated and assimilated artistic patterns from different places and epochs and registered moments and peoples who he then transformed into a visual collage in the form of a film. This collage represents one of the components of the installation purpose designed for the Conversations Space at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum.

In the Bordallo Pinheiro Factory, in Caldas da Rainha, the artist produced the tiles that cover the three structures on display here: Panorama, Mountain and Column. These structures serve as the screen for the projection of a film that displays a succession of images of the pieces themselves, records of their manufacturing process, the people, cities and their buildings.

One of the tiles takes its inspiration from a medieval pattern from Srinagar, Kashmir that punctuates the finishing of the mausoleum of the mother of the Sultan Zain-ul–Abidin, originally from Turkistan, a site associated with one of the most important pieces in the Founder’s collection – a jade jug that belonged to a series of Mughal emperors.

In exploring the interconnections between his work in Kashmir, the global city of Lisbon, the factory in Caldas da Rainha and the collections of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Praneet Soi does not propose a linear narrative but rather an interchange of images that suggests a dynamic in which the play of influences and reinterpretations involves the visitor on a seductive voyage through time and space. A sound installation, created by David Maranha, develops out of the work of Soi and adjoins multiple resonances.

On 23 June, at 4pm, there is a conversation between the artist and the curator João Carvalho Dias.