Greetings from Earth sent into space remind us of our shared planet and the paradox of its divisions.
Jitish Kallat’s installation Covering Letter (Terranum Nuncius) engages with sounds and images launched into space in 1977 as a cosmic greeting from humanity. Encoded in the Golden Records (gold-plated phonograph LPs) carried by NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 and now traveling over 13 billion miles away, these messages were conceived as a “time capsule” meant to last beyond the potential extinction of our species and planet, as well as an introduction to humanity and life on Earth for potential extraterrestrial recipients.
As the sound of greetings in 55 languages permeates the gallery, diverse backlit images pulse slowly, including scientific diagrams, representations of flora and fauna, and depictions of human anatomy and genetic makeup. These 116 visuals, originally encoded as audio signals on the Golden Records, were later converted back into images by U.S.-based engineer Ron Barry, imagining how they might appear to extraterrestrial viewers. A video projection of the Pulsar Map, derived from the cover of the Golden Record, maps the location of our solar system in the galaxy as a kind of cosmic return address.
“In an embattled and accelerated world, Covering Letter (Terranum Nuncius) offers a chance to think about the passage of time at a different scale,” says exhibition curator and Malavalli Family Foundation Associate Curator of the Art of the Indian Subcontinent Padma Dorje Maitland, “as well as an opportunity to reflect on humanity’s common ground.”
Jitish Kallat (b. 1974, Mumbai, India; lives and works in Mumbai)
Jitish Kallat’s work traverses the intersections of science, memory, existential inquiry, and the rhythms of the natural world, inviting reflections on our planetary presence and place in the cosmos. His practice often shifts perspective, across space and time, to reframe the immediate and the imminent. Kallat’s diverse body of work spans abstraction, schematic forms, historical texts, and varied modes of representation, often juxtaposing the everyday with the cosmic, and the terrestrial with the celestial. He has exhibited widely, including a mid-career survey at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, in 2017.
Image: Jitish Kallat, Covering Letter (Terranum Nuncius) (2018–2021), detail and installation view. 116 stereoscopic parallax prints on Plexiglas, programmed LED panels, frames, wooden shelves and bench, 4 horn speakers, video projection. Image courtesy of the artist and Ishara Art Foundation. Photography by Ismail Noor / Seeing Things.
Jitish Kallat: Covering Letter (Terranum Nuncius) is organized by the Asian Art Museum. Presentation is made possible with the generous support of Tad Freese and Brook Hartzell; and Aarti and Sandeep Johri.
Sustained support generously provided by the Akiko Yamazaki and Jerry Yang Endowment Fund for Exhibitions and the Kao/Williams Contemporary Art Exhibitions Fund.
