A Gentle Apocalypse

Editor’s Note: ‘A Gentle Apocalypse’ was held in Hall 1 of Alhamra Arts Council (Mall Road), as a companion to the Indus Conclave 2025 (3rd–5th October, 2025). Here, we present the selected artworks, along with the curator’s note.

For centuries, the gleam of Western progress and modernity has cast its aspirational glow over the rest of the world. Much of the “un-West”, as it were, has scrambled to keep pace with the currents of modernity — industrial, digital and technological revolutions that define advancement. Chronological trajectories of the world have framed progress as the ultimate goal: a culminating ideal for any civilisation or country. To be inscribed in the annals of time, any civilization must adhere to Western ideals of development, sidelining its own indigenous wisdom. But history, Eurocentric in essence, has exempted other frameworks of progress that exist outside of the Western realm.

This exhibition seeks to question the term “progress” itself — a term that, with all its positive connotations, also inherently leaves a trail of destruction in its wake. The global pursuit of Western models of advancement through technology, consumerism and mechanisation has wreaked havoc on human existence. These dystopic realities that the world is now confronted with include, but are not limited, to climate change, erasure of identities, neoliberalism and hegemonic systems of power. What unfolds is a gentle apocalypse: a world caught between the promise of progress and a vast network of destruction.

The following artists were part of the exhibition:

David Alesworth

Nad e Ali

Uzair Amjad

Marjan Baniasadi

Malcolm Hutcheson

Ayesha Jatoi

Amra Khan

Faraz Aamer Khan

Natasha Malik

Zohra Rahman

Elham Rahmati

Farazeh Syed

Risham Syed

Urban Repository Archive/URA

All photographs are courtesy of Indus Conclave.