Reconsider relics at artist talk with Jagrut Raval on his SCAD MOA exhibition 'In the Fullness of Time'

Join SCAD alum Jagrut Raval (M.F.A., photography, 2014) in the gallery for a closer look at his exhibition In the Fullness of Time and a discussion with SCAD Museum of Art assistant curator Brittany Richmond about the philosophy of alchemy and early photographic techniques, as well as canonical histories and the great explorers of the Indian subcontinent.

Raval’s (b. 1986, Ahmedabad, India) interdisciplinary art practice spans diverse mediums at various scales: installations, alternative photographic printing techniques, videos, drawings, and appropriation of found and mass-produced items. Inquiries into the notion of time as experience and its relationship to the human condition, his works critique established truths by investigating, challenging, and subverting perceptions of collective memory.

In the Fullness of Time assembles artifacts from the life and travels of a mysterious man named Narad — said to be a photographer, alchemist, polymath, and explorer — who arrived in the Americas and Europe from India around the 17th or 18th century in search of the Soma Ras, Sanskrit for “elixir of life.” Through this deep dive into Narad’s archive, Raval coaxes us to ruminate on the colonial ambitions of European powers to control distant lands and to consider the curiosity-fueled voyages to unknown places made by Indigenous people from colonized lands.