Desiring the Meeting of Vilhelm Hammershøi and Ram Chandra Vishnayaghar in Copenhagen, November 1906 (with a Guide) (2017)

Desiring the Meeting… (2017) produces—and then destabilises—the desires and relationships involved in art research. Across the Governor’s Mansion, evidence of an alleged 1906 meeting between Bengali trader Ram Chandra Vishnayaghar and Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi is continually rearranged. Dr Zaman’s recollection, an attributed letter and the artist’s notebook deplete their authority through their fractured placement, until the house itself resembles evidence.

Visitors—described as “receivers”—encounter the story through incomplete forms of access. A filing cabinet must be searched, projected material deciphered through a mirror, and the Bengali instruction তাকান—“look”—temporarily converts the mansion into a Hammershøian interior. A conversation can pass almost imperceptibly into performance as the person speaking moves smoothly in and out of character. A telephone call remains present but inaccessible, while dismantled furniture preserves a room’s parts but prevents reconstruction.

The components cycle positions, producing analogue retellings and re-experiences with no definitive sequence. A 120-page guide recombines the letter, research images and correspondence into forty-nine configurations. By exposing the artist’s investment, grant framing and retention of the letter, fantasy, institutional language and archival traces manufacture authority together. Its subject is not whether the meeting occurred, but how wanting it to have occurred reorganises documents, relationships and space.

Presented in Trust in the Unexpected, The Governor’s Mansion, Ghent, 13 October–3 December 2017. Curated by Elena Sorokina.