Where memory is rebuilt: Ali Akbar PN’s quiet architecture of resistance

Ali Akbar PN’s “Reliquary” at Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2025 is a deeply layered artistic project that reimagines heritage as both remembrance and resistance. Here are the key ideas:

Core Concept
- Ali Akbar PN, born in Koolimuttam, Kerala (1996) and now based in Gujarat, presents Reliquary (2024–ongoing).
- It is not a conventional exhibition, but an excavation of memory, heritage, and myth—exploring how cultural narratives survive under pressure and how architecture embodies both coexistence and conflict.

Architectural Resistance
- A life-size carved stone pillar, collaboratively produced by Hindu and Muslim sculptors from Rajasthan, anchors the installation.
- Its fractured form symbolizes broken continuity, while ornamentation echoes temples and mosques across north-western India.
- A carved lion, historically a shared symbol of guardianship, now unsettles—reflecting how motifs are reshaped by contemporary ideologies.

Coastal Dialogues
- The project places Gujarat in dialogue with Malabar, linking two coastal geographies shaped by trade, migration, and cultural negotiations.
- This juxtaposition highlights interconnected histories and diverging present-day social climates.

Method & Material
- Built on site documentation, archival research, and imagination as a methodological tool.
- References sites that are neglected, marginalised, or threatened, some already erased, others at risk of loss.

Spiritual Legacy
- Engages with Gujarat’s plural spiritual traditions, including Sufi shrines and figures like Kabir Das, Bulleh Shah, Imambawa Shah, and Jhulelal.
- These shrines historically embodied lived pluralism, contrasting with today’s polarised cultural memory.

Meaning
- Reliquary is conceived as both remembrance and resistance.
- It asks: Whose histories are preserved? Whose are silenced? How can cultural memory be reclaimed amid destruction and polarisation?

👉 In essence, Ali Akbar PN’s work is a quiet architecture of resistance—using stone, myth, and memory to challenge erasure and rebuild heritage as a living archive.