Himali Singh Soin

Himali Singh Soin 
Static range, 2020  
ongoing, multi-media 
 
About the work:  
Static Range is a multi-disciplinary and multi-limbed project using a real-life spy-story in the Indian Himalayas as a canvas for speculations and reflections about nuclear culture, porosity, leakages, toxicity and love, spiritual-scientific entanglements, environmental catastrophe and post-nation states. This series of transmissions that make up 'static range', include an animated stamp, letters, music, embroidery, healing, ceramics, planting and a performance installation.  

Nanda Devi, meaning the goddess of happiness, is the patron mountain of the Indian Himalayas. During the cold war in 1965, the CIA collaborated with the Indian Intelligence Bureau to site a nuclear-powered surveillance device on the mountain to intercept Chinese nuclear missile data. The mountain goddess, a temperamental revolutionary, whipped up an immense tempest, and the expedition had to turn back. The plutonium powered device was stashed on the mountain with the intention of recovering it the following season, however it has yet to be found, and “could still be ticking somewhere”.  
Since 1965, the plutonium-powered generator, half the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, has been leaking radioactivity into the mountain, creating glimmering blue ice caves. Mysterious cases of cancer abound in the Sherpa communities of the surrounding villages, and the mountain has since been closed to subsequent expeditions.  
In 1978, during the two years the sanctuary was reopened, my father, a mountaineer, went on an expedition to climb Dunagiri. From there, they took a photograph of Nanda Devi, which was made into a postage stamp by the Indian Telegraph services.  
Using the conceit of the stamp, static range begins with a toxic love-letter from the spy device to the mountain.  
Conflating these public and personal histories, a 15-minute animation of the image of the postage stamp morphs as if it were subjected to radiation, resplendent in the nuclear sublime. The word “India” disappears, erasing the nation state and its obliterating violences, drawing attention to blank stamps and letters that never reach those across zones of conflict. Loves lost or never requited. 

Location: Gallery MMB, Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai

 
A therapeutic garden  
A bio-remediation planting project at the CSMVS Children’s Museum in the context of Static Range, a multi-media artwork about nuclear culture and the invisible toxicities with which we live. The garden is composed of a variety of species that absorb radiation. ​

Location: Lawns of the Children’s Museum, CSMVS​
 

about the artist

Himali works across text, performance and moving image. She utilizes metaphors from the natural environment to construct speculative cosmologies that reveal non-linear entanglements between human and non-human life. Her poetic methodology explores the myriad technologies of knowing, from scientific to intuitional, indigenous and alchemical processes. Her inspirations include the ancient Stoics and contemporary literature, travel diaries and ancient diagrams. In the face of extinction, her work insists on resurgence.  
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Soin's art has been shown internationally, from Khoj (Delhi), Somerset House, Mimosa House, Serpentine Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery (London), Gropius Bau, EWERK, HKW (Berlin), Migros Museum (Zurich), Anchorage museum (Alaska), Kadist (San Francisco) and the Shanghai Biennale. She was the recipient of the Frieze Artist Award 2019, part of the curatorial team of Momenta Biennale 2021 in Montréal and Writer-in-Residence at the Whitechapel Gallery in London 2020-2021.