In Search of Some Phantom

International Body of Art's first exhibition of 2024, 'In Search of Some Phantom'. This exhibition acted as the first chapter of a three-part installment that continued throughout the year, with each exhibition adding to an exploration of temporality and its ties to the condition of being within our present world.

Lending its title from a quote in Marcel Proust’s 'In Search of Lost Time', this exhibition set out to investigate Time as a subjective experience, one entangled with personal, political, and religious thought. Through the lens of twenty artists from around the world, we aimed to bring a wide variety of cultural perspectives, paying homage to the preservation of different modes of being, each distinct from the traditional Western notion of linearity.

In Western thought, Time had been bound by rigid constraints, such that it could only move upon a straight line, ticking away in staccato fashion on a steady road to progression. Yet Time in this manner took on a bulldozing persona, where differing ideologies, or ways of relating to the world, were diminished, cast outside of the paradigms of this fine line. The idea that the path that we are on is the path that must continue (conceptually and physically) was one rooted in colonial thought, and one that ought to be regularly interrogated.

Approaching the topic from IBA’s characteristic trans-disciplinary approach, the exhibition included elements of visual art, alongside sound, scent, taste, and touch. Throughout the show we hoped to present space to be creative about your most intuitive experiences. To dive into the past and throw it into the future, to look into yourself and to know that you are looking, to feel time passing and to experience time passed, to Search For Some Phantom, and to shake hands with it too.