Hammad Nasar on The Discomfort of Repair: Exhibition Making as ‘Pushing Hands’ with Art’s Histories

The Tai Chi-based exercise of ‘pushing hands’ is a model of practice that requires its practitioners to meet incoming force with softness; to move with the force and redirect it, or allow it to exhaust itself. In this presentation, London-based curator Hammad Nasar uses ‘pushing hands’ as a lens through which to consider recent curatorial projects that deal with difficult histories, and argues for the exhibition itself as a kind of social infrastructure.

Hammad Nasar is a curator, writer and strategist based in London. Known for collaborative, exhibition-led inquiry, his recent exhibitions include: Beyond the Page: South Asian Miniature Painting and Britain, 1600 to Now (2023–24); Making New Worlds: Li Yuan-chia & Friends (2023-24); British Art Show 9 (2021–22); Turner Prize (2021); and Rock, Paper, Scissors, the UAE’s national pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017).

Nasar was co-founder of the pioneering London art space, Green Cardamom; Head of Research & Programmes at Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong; Executive Director of the Stuart Hall Foundation, London; and has held senior research fellowships at UAL’s Decolonising Arts Institute and Yale University’s Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. He advises numerous arts organisations and is a Board Member of the Henry Moore Foundation, UK, and Mophradat, Belgium, and a Council Member of Asia Forum. He was awarded an MBE for services to the arts in 2023.

^{Photo: Vipul Sangoi}