The Bird, A Bone, and Other Witnesses of a Museum Fire
Sahil Naik
In The Bird, A Bone and other Witnesses of a Museum Fire, artist Sahil Naik treats the book as a medium to examine, depart from, and stay with the fires that ravaged the National Museum of Natural History, New Delhi, and the Zoology Department of Ballygunge Science College, Kolkata, in 2016, which reduced centuries of preserved specimens and their stories to ashes. This publication follows the journeys of some of these lost artefacts, delving into their significance through inquiries and anecdotes, both past and present.
Moving beyond the museum, the artist contemplates the profound sense of loss caused by institutional neglect when the national cultural infrastructure charged with preserving knowledge in public memory collapses. Through fluid evidence, stories, his own artworks, and reproductions of floating images by others, the artist invites readers to contemplate the future of natural history and museums.
Sahil Naik is an artist based in Goa. His practice examines the modalities of evidence and truth through architecture, minor and casual histories, mythology, forensics and the internet.
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