Afterlives: The Weaver, A Chorus, An Archipelago

Inspired by the Glasgow 2026 Festival theme of ‘social justice’, this group exhibition brings together the works of artists Erika Tan, Gogularaajan Rajendran, and Elia Nurvista, looking at the afterlives of colonialism in Southeast Asia. Through film, textiles and installation, the exhibition brings into dialogue practices that approach these legacies and inherited narratives to reveal obscured or marginalised histories. The works ask how acts of remembering and acknowledgement might open pathways towards a more just future.

Gogularaajan Rajendran’s Coolie’s Chorus (2025) draws on Tamil plantation songs to foreground the lived experiences of indentured labourers, revealing how collective memory persists through voice and performance. Erika Tan’s work reflects on the life of Halimah Binte Abdullah, a Malayan weaver who was brought to London for the 1924 British Empire Exhibition, bringing attention to the forgotten and overlooked subjects of empire. Elia Nurvista’s batik work examines the contemporary politics of plantation economies through the palm oil industry, connecting colonial agricultural systems to present-day forms of extraction, monoculture, and global capital.

The works on display trace the enduring impacts of colonial systems, particularly in relation to labour, migration, and plantation logics, while attending to the ways these histories continue to shape cultural memory and material conditions today.

Afterlives: The Weaver, A Chorus, An Archipelago is curated by Alaya Ang, an artist-curator originally from Singapore, now based in Glasgow. Rooted in community-led and collective modes of working, Alaya’s practice engages with Southeast Asian histories to explore the intersections of home, migration, and ancestral improvisation.

• https://www.erikatan.net/the-forgotten-w...