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Persistence of Vision

Persistence of Vision Documentary Duration: 29:35 minutes Raqs Media Collective and Kumar Shahani’s (1940-2024) memories. ‘Persistence of Vision’ is a documentary for Television (the short lived Doordarshan III channel) made in 1995 by Raqs Media […]
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The Bicyclist Who Fell into a Time-Cone

The Bicyclist Who Fell into a Time-Cone, published by Jencks Foundation (2023), takes the form of an artist book, and foregrounds text over image. Mirroring the film’s visual textures, the five voices in the pamphlet register varying distances from what is seen on the screen and its potential elucidations: voiceover, description of images, words on screen, added layers of annotations and meta-annotations.

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All, Humans

All, Humans builds itself from uniquely human faculty of language to construct conceptual categories that transverse the human condition. It arcs out like a canopy – suspended between a multiplicity of minds, hearts and hands, sheltering and anticipating the universal human aspiration and claim for freedom, equality and dignity.

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An Interview

The Collective Eye interviews Raqs Media Collective and delves deep into their early days, influences, and experiences. They discuss a wide range of works from ‘Coronation Park’ in 2015 to the public commission, ‘All, Human’ in 2023.

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The Waves are Rising

The Waves are Rising Animation, Augmented Reality Public intervention at Royal Docks & Thames Barrier Park, London E16 Sea Change: New climate stories for the Royal Docks by Invisible Dust ‘The Waves Are Rising’ features […]
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The Bicyclist Who Fell into a Time-Cone 

The Bicyclist Who Fell into a Time-Cone Chronogram/ film Duration: 25:05 minutes Commissioned by Jencks Foundation at The Cosmic House, United Kingdom (2023) The Bicyclist who fell into a Time Cone oscillates between fact and fiction while […]
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1980 in Parallax

Exhibition at Jencks Foundation at The Cosmic House, United Kingdom (2023) Raqs finds correspondence with Charles Jencks’ work as designer, critic, historian, concrete poet and artist, and with his Post-Modernist manifesto and former home turned […]
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An Infra-vocabulary for Capital

An Infra-vocabulary for Capital (2023) Vinyl on wall, dimensions variable Further Annotation to ‘Notations on Time’ by Raqs Media Collective at Ishara Foundation, Dubai Upright board with an inscribed ‘Infra-Vocabulary’ of a selection from Raqs […]

Practising Collectivity:
What is possible and
not yet forbidden?

Published in CURARE – Curatorial Studies by Ute Müller-Tischler and Solvej Helweg Ovesen 

The CURARE Reader is published as part of the CAMPI Curating and Management in Public Institutions program of the District Office for Mitte in Berlin, Office for Further Education and Culture, The Department of Art, Culture and History 

Yours, Sincerely (2022)

Essay as a part of Half-Life, a collaboration between e-flux Architecture and the Art Institute of Chicago within the context of its exhibition “Static Range” by Himali Singh Soin

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Betaal / बे-ताल / Arrhythmic

Betaal / बे-ताल / ArrhythmicWires, Towers, Tablets and Augmented Reality Figures‘Being Theoria’, Zhejiang Art Museum, 4th Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art, China (2022) The relationship between what is real, and what is also simultaneously real, […]
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Time Travel: Board Game for Two Players

Time Travel : Board Game for Two Players Game board, scrabble squares, instructions 2022 and ongoing Time Travel was launched as a game during the Primary Forms 2, an exhibition of artists games for children […]
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Au_racle

Non-fungible, Digital object Video loop connected to fluctuating real-time global price index for gold  Non-fungible Speculations, Nature Morte, New Delhi (2022) 
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soDA Magazine Story

soDA magazine 19, Zurich (2002); Casebook (2014, AGYU Canada), Raqs presented the concept of “Event-shaped Hole” which translated into the essay The Event-shaped Hole and the Photographic Image in The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, 2021 […]
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Hungry for Time

Hungry for Time An invitation to epistemic disobedience with Raqs Media CollectiveArt Collections of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (2021-2022) The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna has undergone a fundamental renovation and modernization and […]
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The Laughter of Tears

The Laughter of Tears | 2021 Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany  When we are in the sonic range of the flightpaths of a flock of birds returning to a roosting site, we become intimate with their together-ness. […]
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When Proust Catches the Glare

When Proust Catches the Glare, 2021Video, Text, Scanned Handwriting. 7 minutes, 45 seconds As the earth turns to spin slightly faster than before in 2021, and as the heavens break ranks, involuntary memories return to […]
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Salt

Raqs works with salt, or that refers to salt, as material or concept. The inquiry started from “Salt”, a photo-essay published in The Drama Review, Volume 65 Issue 4, 2021. Salt, The Drama Review, Volume 65 Issue […]
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The Ghost is Here Again

The Ghost is Here Again, 2014 Video Wallpaper The Laughter of Tears, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2021); The ghost is here again.To be neither witness, nor agent, not even provocateur, to be perhaps just a haunting laugh […]
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Intimate Intimidation 

Intimate Intimidation Readymade canopy, radiation hazard sign inscribed as a pattern in salt on the floor (240 x 240 cm) The Laughter of Tears, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2021) Every willful misstep, every greedy grab, is an intimate […]
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Bestiary

Bestiary, 2021 Paper, digital drawings, photographic colour print, gold embossing 40 prints of 33 x 46 cm each The Laughter of Tears, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2021) A New Jataka Tale:A Sumatran Rhinoceros, a Splendid Poison […]
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Tears (are not only from weeping)

Tears (are not only from weeping) Video loop, LED panel Duration: 05:59 “Laughter of Tears”, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2021) Tears are not only for weeping, they lubricate the possibility of vision. Sometimes we see things better […]
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Do Harmonious Friends cause dissonance?

Do Harmonious Friends cause dissonance?Blackboard paint, newspaper, chalk, text, silkscreen, glass eyes6 frames of 55 x 70 cm each The Laughter of Tears, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2021) An owl and a donkey interpolate themselves, indicating […]
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Comic Contempt

Comic Contempt  Seven découpe text on leather, etching on acrylic  40 x 68 cm each The Laughter of Tears, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2021) As time refracts, its shatter illuminates differing strands. A comic’s contempt, her whisper […]
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The Coarse Fabric of Being Human 

The Coarse Fabric of Being Human 22 hand-tufted carpets  61 × 76 cm each The Laughter of Tears, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2021)  The only actually shared sensation is the present continuous tense. It reconstitutes, everyday, […]
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Ferment

If the big, open sky is a canopy for the tumult of birds and angels, then under which roof does the flight of the ferment of our times soar? Tent cities spring from the streets […]
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Parade

Parade Gold and silver screen print on velvet. 2021 310cm x 147.5cm Delhi Contemporary Art Week (DCAW), Nature Morte, Bikaner House, New Delhi (2021) One thing after another. Everything in and out of step. The […]
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Memes and Fables

Memes and Fables: …tick tock Newspaper, blackboard ink, chalk and screen print. 2021 70cm x 54.5cm Memes and Fables: …tock tick Newspaper, blackboard ink, chalk and screen print. 2021 68cm x 55.5cm Memes and Fables: […]
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Chromachron

Chromachron Paint, pantone colors of the years 2020 and 2021 The Laughter of Tears, Braunschweig, Germany (2021); Delhi Contemporary Art Week, Nature Morte, Bikaner House, New Delhi (2021) Unexpected arrivals (of a virus in one […]
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31 Days

31 Days, 2020 Video with Calligraphy, Pixels, Sound Duration: 17:45 mins The Laughter of Tears, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2021); The Pandemic Circle at Stamps Gallery, Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, Expo Chicago – online […]
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A Gathering of Birds

A Gathering of Birds Audio loop with 3 Speakers Duration: 32:41 In the sonic range of the flight-path of a gathering of birds, we momentarily transmit to each other. We surpass contours of containment, and […]
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Unledgered

Unledgered Installation Portals, Stories, and Other Journeys curated by Michelle Wong  Tai Kwun Contemporary, JC Contemporary, Hong Kong (2021) The exhibition was based on Asia Art Archive’s research since 2014 into the personal archive of […]

Hungry
for
Time

An invitation to epistemic disobedience with Raqs Media Collective, in the Art Collections of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

Salt

Text and image essay by Raqs, published in The Drama Review, Volume 65 Issue 4, 2021

Thickets

Text by Raqs, published in “Slow Reader: A Resource for Design Thinking and Practice”, 2021

Sharing
our
Sources

Text by Raqs (and extracts from essays), in the first publication accompanying “Afterglow”, Yokohama Triennale 2020, curated by Raqs Media Collective

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Afterglow

Yokohama Triennale 17 July – 11 October 2020 Afterglow presents works that turn space into complex diagrams of thought and feeling. It comes into close contact with the ancient, rubbing against time to discern untested […]
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Still more World

Dohas for Doha Five Videos, LED screens, variable dimensions Still More World, Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art | Doha (2019) Dohas woven by Kabir, Rahim sees them in the Stars Raqs finds them everywhere, […]

The Double Act of Flower-Time

Text by Raqs, published in Routledge Companion to Art in the Public Realm, editors Cameron Cartiere + Leon Tan, 2021

Anta(h)shira

Text by Raqs, for Untranslatable Terms of Cultural Practices: A Shared Vocabulary, 2021

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The Course of love

The Course of Love Sculpture using faceted Lenticular panels, with Found Boat Setouchi Triennale | Honjima (2019) Setouchi Triennale | Honjima wataru funa-bito / the boatman lost the rudder. kaji-wo tae / the boat is […]
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In the Open or in Stealth

In the Open or in Stealth Installation MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2018) A realignment of resources, technologies, and energies is taking place. The intimationof this emergent ensemble, however, is faint and tangled.The exhibition […]
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Deep Breath

Deep Breath | 2019Film (25 minutes)  Pamphilos | Athens Sometimes, the finding of an antidote to the most basic and lethal form of amnesia, ‘the forgetting of air’, may require the undertaking of a deep […]
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Dohas for Doha

Dohas for Doha Five Videos, LED screens, variable dimensions Still More World, Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art | Doha (2019) Dohas woven by Kabir, Rahim sees them in the Stars Raqs finds them everywhere, […]

21 Personae

21 Personae is an extension of the 51 Personae project curated by Raqs Media Collective for the 11th Shanghai Biennale (2016–17). In Barcelona, the project coincides with the In the Open or in Stealth 2018 – 17 March 2019), curated for MACBA by Raqs Media Collective and coordinated by Hiuwai Chu

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Time Devices (2011- 18)

Whenever the Heart Skips a Beat | 4 min 31 seconds Animated Horological Video, Words Click here to watch the video (email us on studio@raqsmediacollective.net to request access) A Day in the Life of Kiribati […]
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Raqs Media Collective

Raqs Media Collective Exhibition K21, Museum for 21st Century Art, Dusseldorf (2018)  The point of departure for this exhibition is Raqs’ continual fascination with time, a topic that has preoccupied the members of the group […]
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Not yet at ease

Not Yet At Ease | 2018 Installation, Sound, Video, Treated Archival Footage and Photographs, Interpreted Documents FirstSite, Colchester, United Kingdom (2018) and ‘Spinal’, Firth Street Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2019) Invoking transcripts of letters and […]
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Provisions for everybody (film)

Provisions for Everybody Single screen, Video, 50 minutes, Furniture 2018 Provisions for Everybody inscribes an eccentric itinerary on and off the trail of George Orwell that accompanies a reading of ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’. […]
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Provisions for everybody

Provisions for Everybody Installation: 3 Videos, large drawing print, 3 dhurrie banners, drawings on vinyl, found furnitureAV Festival, Newcastle (2018), ‘Still More World’ Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2019) “Coal Mine. Windmill. Sugarcane Field. […]
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Three Shadows

Three Shadows Video, loop Exhibited at The Laughter of Tears, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2021); Not Yet At Ease FirstSite, Colchester, United Kingdom (2018); ‘Spinal’, Fifth Street Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2019) In Three Shadows, the dancing […]
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A Planet Turns on its Axis Without Permission

A Planet Turns on its Axis Without Permission Single screen, Video, 18:04 minutes “Provisions for Everybody” at AV Festival, Newcastle (2018), ‘Still More World’ Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2019) Turning, and turning around, […]
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Thicket

A thicket is a concentration of living matter. In forests, gardens, and fields, thickets rise where different plant species find it possible to thrive together in a wild celebration of life itself. Conversations too can […]
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Provisions

Project 88 (Mumbai) 2018 “everything is burning” Raqs Media Collective returns to Project 88, Mumbai with “Provisions”, an exhibition that brings together the premiere in India of an ambitious recent video travelogue, ‘Provisions for Everybody’ […]
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The Assurance Clock & Toxicare 

Featured in digital posters It’s Urgent! Part II & III, Luma Westbau, Zurich 2018 The Assurance Clock The clock in the poster is an embodiment of assurance, the opposite of alarm. This is an attitude […]
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Workers and Robots Enter A Factory Canteen

Manga style text-image assemblage. Ten screen printed panels on newsprint. Unlimited Edition 2018 Graphics by Freddy Corasco An imagined conversation between real, embodied and artificial forms of intelligence, set in a moment of respite on […]
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To Ask, When Empty

To Ask, When Empty |2018 5 Lenticular Panels, 1ft. X 2ft each Project 88 | Mumbai A suite of six uniquely colourful lenticular prints offer a dance of terse imperatives at the intersection of will […]
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Toxicity in Equal Measure

Toxicity in Equal Measure Layered sheets with perforations on felt, leather, rubber, copper, steel, cardboard, fabric and acrylic, with gold impressions. 22 frames, 1 ft. X 1 ft. each Project 88 | Mumbai (2018) A […]
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Re Run

Re-Run | 2013 Video loop ‘Extra Time’ at Chronus Art Center, Shanghai (2013) |  ‘Untimely Calendar’ at NGMA, New Delhi (2014) | ‘Raqs Media Collective’ at K21, Dusseldorf (2018) Henri Cartier-Bresson took a photograph of a bank […]

Foreground Manoeuvres

Text by Raqs, published in Critical Times: Interventions in Global Critical Theory, Critical Times (2018) 1 (1): 272–276

WHAT TIME IS IT

Technologies of Life in the Contemporary (14th – 16th December, 2017), Sarai-CSDS, Delhi and Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi; Conference Conveners: Ravi Sundaram, Ravi Vasudevan (Sarai-CSDS) + Raqs Media Collective (Monica Narula, Jeebesh Bagchi, Shuddhabrata Sengupta); Conference Coordinators: Farah Batool (Goethe-Institut/ Max Mueller Bhavan), Satakshi Sinha (Sarai-CSDS)

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The necessity of Infinity

The necessity of Infinity | 2017 Reading performance, Carpet, gold embroidery, Performers, musical tone generators; Carpet Dimensions 4 x 4.8m | Exhibited at Sharjah Biennale 2017, Sharjah “The Necessity of Eternity” recounts what must be […]
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The Blood of Stars

The Blood of Stars Single screen, Video, 13 minutes  Extracts from a Future History | Lulea  (2017); The Laughter of Tears, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2021) The Blood of Stars invites us to think about the […]
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Alive, with Cerussite and Peppered Moth

Alive, with Cerussite and Peppered Moth 3D printed PLA plastic, cast polyester resin, plywood and video projections  Architectural Collaborators: Palak Jhunjhunwala and Stratis Georgiu Exhibition History: Whitworth, Manchester (2017) Mathaf, Doha (2018) Palais de Tokyo, […]
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The Emperor’s Old Clothes & Hollowgram

The Emperor’s Old Clothes | 2017 3D printed PLA Plastic and cast polyester resin Shortlisted for fourth plinth on Trafalgar Square Hollowgram| 2017  3D printed PLA plastic, cast polyester resin, plywood and video projections  Serpentine Gallery […]
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The Translator’s Silence

The Translator’s Silence Three lenticular panels, 22 inches x 36.6 inches each Lines of Control: the Partition as Productive Space, Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca (2012)
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Utsushimi

Utsushimi (2017 – ongoing)  Double Image / Token / Emanation Materialized Architectural Drawing in Illuminated Wireframe  Site specific installation at Suzu City, Oku-Noto Triennale, Japan
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Undoing walls

Undoing Walls| 2017 1’ 55” Animation loop, Variable Dimensions Can a “dysfunctional” wall structure be imagined so as to question the original intentions of a Government? Can a “welcoming” and useful wall be created; one […]

51 Personae

51 Personae expands the possibilities of the 11th Shanghai Biennale: Why Not Ask Again: Arguments, Counterarguments, and Stories curated by Raqs Media Collective, as a series of gatherings that took place in different parts of Shanghai between 12 November 2016 and 12 March 2017.

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Communard Biscuits

Communard Biscuits (2017) 3 D Printing, Silicone mould, flour, water, salt500 biscuits, 9 x 1 x 1 cm (each) Exhibited at Whitworth, Manchester A hard tack biscuit from the Paris Commune of 1871 was 3D scanned, […]
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Presentomorrow

Presentomorrow Installation with Video, Still Images and Animated Text Exhibited at Mondialité curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Asad Raza, Villa Empain, Boghossian Foundation, Brussels 2017 The installation presented within the framework of Mondialité makes references to […]
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The Return of Tipoo’s Tiger

The Return of Tipoo’s Tiger | 2017 Performance, 2 video projections, masks, paper plaques V&A Museum | London Imagine an Eighteenth century South Indian automaton of a devouring tiger commissioned by Tipoo Sultan becoming a […]
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Dyeing Inayat Khan 

Dyeing Inayat Khan (2016) 2- channel video installation, color and sound New Sensorium, ZKM, Karlsruhe (2016) | Nature Morte, Bikaner House, Delhi (2021) Animation and editing: Ikroop Sandhu and Rajan Singh Click here to watch the […]
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Perhaps

Site specific Installation Lincoln Brayford Pool, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK (2016) Perhaps (An Investigation Outside The Laws of Thought) The arcs in the sculpture are portals. And as portals, they recall George Boole’s (who […]

Memorophilia

Text accompanying the performance titled Memorophilia held at Tate Modern (2016).