One of the most prominent artists working in moving image today will be presented at Serpentine North, from 23 September 2026 until 31 January 2027. For over two decades, Amar Kanwar has developed a distinctive body of lyrical films that move between documentary, travelogue and visual essay to explore the specific conditions of the Indian subcontinent. Having produced and directed numerous films and multi-video installations, Kanwar’s poetic and contemplative works are frequently marked by the history of his country, tracing the legacies of decolonialisation and the Partition of India and Pakistan.

Whilst charged with a regional specificity and deeply personal histories, Kanwar’s work grapples with some of the most pressing issues of our time. Reckoning with the past as a means to better comprehend the present, Kanwar bears witness to social upheaval, displacement, power, violence, justice and memory, ultimately revealing what unites – rather than differentiates – us, regardless of geography or context. 

Within the darkened galleries, visitors will encounter a trilogy of transfixing films by Kanwar: the feature-length Such a Morning (2017), the multi-screen installation The Peacock’s Graveyard (2023), and a new multi-screen installation titled The Charcoal Man (2026), which will premiere at Serpentine.

Amar Kanwar said: “Our capacity for evil is not new and yet the last decade has twisted this knife deeper into our souls. On our knees, face to face with our own selves, the bottomless well reflects the sky. I cannot remember anymore, said the patriot to the traitor. For I have forgotten what I have forgotten. That’s not a problem he replied, as I have forgotten too.
I am grateful to Serpentine for this very special invitation. I am also deeply grateful to a small set of friends who have helped me make these film installations. And for the support that I have received. Everyone has shared a part of themselves while making this possible.”

The exhibition opens with the poetic seven-screen installation The Peacock’s Graveyard. Originally commissioned for Sharjah Biennial 15 and presented in London for the first time, it is described by the artist not as “a lament or mourning, but perhaps a kind of gift, a collection of stories, something to keep by one’s side every day, or take along if going someplace, or to help us reconfigure life […] These stories lay the groundwork for reflecting on our unbearable arrogance, delusions and deep desire for violence.”

In this work, Kanwar creates a mesmerising tapestry of imagery across seven screens overlaid with stories written by the artist that draw on contemporary and ancient fables and oral histories, alongside the artist’s own personal experience. Addressing profound questions that consider the fleeting nature of human existence and the cycle of life, The Peacock’s Graveyard offers new forms of reconciliation, resistance and the potential for transformation, inviting viewers to reflect upon collective and individual truths.

Presented in one of Serpentine North’s characteristic brick-vaulted Powder Rooms is Kanwar’s feature-length film titled Such a Morning. First presented at documenta 14 in Athens, Greece, and Kassel, Germany, Such a Morning is a slow meditation on two people’s engagement with truth and the subject of darkness. Conceived as a modern parable, it follows the sudden retirement of a famous mathematician and prominent professor who finds refuge in an abandoned train carriage in a forest. Speculation on his motives from those who knew him are proposed via intermittent subtitles: ‘a deep inner question of the soul’, ‘a complex conflict of ideology and prejudice’, ‘he was beginning to lose his eyesight and therefore retreated to acclimatise to darkness before total darkness descended.’

Over the course of the 85-minute film, the unnamed protagonist blacks out the train carriage windows where he momentarily loses sight and begins to receive new visions in the dark. These revelations – part-epiphany, part-hallucination – take form in a series of letters that examine forty-nine types of darkness that are catalogued within an ‘Almanac of the Dark’. A parallel story centred on a woman also emerges, defying singular interpretation as it runs alongside the protagonist’s own narrative. 

Alongside these immersive film installations, the perimeter galleries of Serpentine North will be populated by the professor’s letters. Offering a tactile extension to the letters that continue to be written by the professor in and beyond Such a Morning, this striking, yet delicate, series is comprised of multiple projected images, videos and texts on handmade ramie and cotton fibre papers. The papers for the letters were made by Sherna Dastur. 

The exhibition at Serpentine will also mark the premiere of a new seven-screen film installation commissioned by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Delhi, titled The Charcoal Man. In ways, an extension of The Peacock’s Graveyard, this new work emerges from the artist’s ongoing engagement with the 1947 Partition of the Indian subcontinent into two nations. Building on themes present in much of Kanwar’s work – particularly the interconnection, or coexistence, of fact, fantasy and fiction – the artist has said that this work seeks “coherence from disintegration, insight from fusion, and stories from within stories.” Presented in one of Serpentine North’s Powder Rooms, the installation weaves together images and text and aims to trace the cycles of betrayal, vengeance, illusion, passion, jealousy and rage that continue to permeate society today. 

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Images: Amar Kanwar, The Peacock’s Graveyard, 2023 (film still). Digital video installation, 7 screens, dimensions variable, 28 min., 16 sec. Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery and Amar Kanwar, The Peacock’s Graveyard, 2023. (Film still) Digital video installation, 7 screens, dimensions variable, 28 mins, 16 sec. Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery.