Künstlerhaus Bethanien

Specters of Sultana

Becoming B – Kapitel 3

Opening

25.09.2025

19 Uhr

Exhibition

26.09.2025 -

05.10.2025

Mi–So: 14–19 Uhr

admission free

Archival photograph, courtesy Mitra/Sengupta family

Specters of Sultana: A Speculative History of Subcontinental Science is the third chapter of the project Becoming B. With contributions by Areez Katki, Aulic Anamika, Chitra Ganesh, houaïda, Iskander Abdalla, Kei Watanabe, Leila Bencharnia, Omar Kasmani, Perera Elsewhere, Sumona Dhakal, Wooly Aziz, and Zuneera Shah, the exhibition imagines, based on the groundbreaking 1905 science fiction story Sultana’s Dream by Bengali Muslim educator Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, imagines Sultana as a time-traveling “ghost in a machine” of South Asian history.

In 1905, under British colonial rule, the subcontinent experienced the partition of Bengal. Protests erupted on the streets and anti-colonial sentiments shaped politics, science and art. In Calcutta, Begum Rokeya published her dream of a utopian feminist society.

120 years after the publication of this key text, amidst the devastating aftermath of multiple partitions and the rise of postcolonial ultranationalisms, Begum Rokeya’s words make it clear that Sultana’s Dream was less fiction and more a factual account. It was about a hidden history, an inventory of actors and queer pioneers of anti-colonial scholarship on the subcontinent.

Specters of Sultana is a speculative archive of anti-colonial scholarship from a South Asian perspective, presented through objects, images, sounds and texts of queer feminist diasporas from South Asia and the Middle East. Family archives, historical research and anti-colonial speculative practices are interwoven to trace Begum Rokeya’s fantastical trajectories of non-linear time and liberatory imagination to create an alternative history of discursive decolonization.

Organized by Promona Sengupta, Aziza Ahmad and Aziz Sohail

 


 

Events

25.09., 7 p.m.
Exhibition opening

28.09., 5 – 7 p.m.
On the Arts of (Un)Telling Dreams
Workshop with Omar Kasmani and Iskander Abdalla

04.10., 4 – 6 p.m.
Disobedient Dreamscapes: Worldbuilding, Time-travel
and Comradeship across South Asia
Workshop with Sumona Dhakal

18.36 – 19.36 pm
Turning Worlds /\ 720° Upside Down
Reading with Aulic Anamika, Zuneera Shah and Shaunak Mahbubani
Performance with houaïda, Promona Sengupta

All events are held in English.

 

The exhibition is funded by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.

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