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David Soin Tappeser

@davidsointappeser

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One half of #hylozoicdesires w/ @himalisinghsoin

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Salt Lines at the Jaipur Centre for Art concluded on 9 August with a walkthrough led by artist duo, Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser).

The artists reflected on the research journeys, archival encounters, and filming processes that informed the exhibition, tracing the histories and speculative worlds summoned by its photographic, sonic, textile, and moving-image works.

Across these works, Salt Lines revisited the lost archive of the Inland Customs Line and the deeds, divisions and divinations that continue to reverberate in the present.

Presented by Jaipur Centre for Art in collaboration with RMZ Foundation.

#SaltLines #RMZFoundation #JaipurCentreForArt #HylozoicDesires by @davidsointappeser

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a month ago

3000 Realms. Our second "posting" in Ladakh for @sabiennale was at the scenic spot of Nurla Bridge. Here we were introduced to the eccentric world of @himalisinghsoin and @davidsointappeser who decided to take on the mammoth challenge of assembling 3000 handmade bells to be fixed onto the suspension bridge at Nurla over the rushing Indus River.
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The bridge crosses over the river at a point where it merges into multiple mountain streams and there's an existing cacophony and roaring of the rapids that constantly remind you of the presence of the mighty river.
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As we worked on, drilling, tying and cutting on repeat, we became a part of this family that sang, danced, laughed and loved what we did. After we pulled off the task in 2 days, sitting in the middle of the gently swaying bridge over the river at midnight, we sat listening to the bells ringing along with the rushing river, the regular world of my daily life felt so far away and it was just the river, the mountains and the threads of sound we wove on nature's existing symphony.
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#sabiennalle #saladakh #utladakhtourism #nurla #lumixindia taken in Nurla by @davidsointappeser

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2 months ago

On National Handloom Day, we celebrate Mountain, Pixelated in the Water, an Ikat tapestry by Himali Singh Soin, woven with the pattern of the sound waves of her South Asian Futurism manifesto, Subcontinentment.

As part of a series of fictional ice archives, south asian futurism, renamed subcontinentment, anti-chronicles the geopoetic links between the poles and the subcontinent.

Subcontinentment (2020) and Mountain Pixelated in Water (2021) are on view at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (@labiennale), In Minor Keys, curated by Koyo Kouoh. Supported by RMZ Foundation (@rmz_foundation) and Avtar Foundation for the Arts (@avtarfoundation), with Fondazione Henraux (@fondazionehenraux).

📍 Arsenale
On view until 22 November 2026.

#RMZFoundation #BiennaleArte #HimaliSinghSoin #DavidSoinTappeser #InMinorKeys by @davidsointappeser

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2 months ago

Salt Lines by the artistic duo, Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser), arrived at The Jaipur Center for Art last week.

The Inland Customs Line, a 4,000 km long border, of which 2,500 km was a planted ‘hedge’, ran across the subcontinent, enforcing the British monopoly on salt. It was eventually abandoned after the British seized control of Sambhar Salt Lake in 1879. Presented in a city close to Sambhar Lake, the exhibition brings the colonial border’s largely forgotten story back to a historically significant landscape.

The Sambhar Salt Lake informs the exhibition’s central video work, The Hedge of Halomancy, adding another layer of resonance to the exhibition. Mayalee, the courtesan protagonist of the work, might have even wandered these very halls in the past. Salt Lines traverses textile, video, and photography, at the threshold of historical records and speculative enquiry, reflecting on the division between those who viewed nature as a resource to be extracted and the natural world’s own insistence on mutuality.

Presented by Jaipur Centre for Art in collaboration with RMZ Foundation.

Salt Lines
On View from 3 July 2026 – 9 August 2026
Jaipur Centre for Art, City Palace

RMZ Foundation continues to support Himali and David’s practice across India and beyond, inviting sustained engagement with their collaborative, research-led and imaginative works.

Founded in 2024, Jaipur Center for Art(JCA) is a platform for contemporary art, film, and design in Jaipur. It connects local heritage with global artistic practices.

#RMZFoundation #JaipurCentreforArt #SaltLines by @davidsointappeser

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3 months ago

Last week, the 61st Venice Biennale officially opened, featuring works by seven Desert X alumni artists. including Himali Singh Soin & David Tappeser / Hylozoic/Desires.

The duo, who participated in the 2023 Coachella Valley edition of Desert X, creates work centered on the rhythms of love and the pulse of belonging. Their methodology draws on research into place and history to imagine speculative futures, bridging the musical language of jazz with the literary tradition of poetry. Their practice explores time, interdependence, and alterity, using rhythm to challenge linear perceptions and reveal intercultural entanglements, parallel histories, and more-than-human perspectives.

In this artist feature, h/d reflects on ‘Namak Nazar,’ a work that constructs an imagined cosmology through metaphors drawn from outer space and the natural world, exploring interference, distance, intimacy, and connection. Inspired by the proliferation of conspiracy cultures, from UFOlogy to cybernetic spirituality, the artists created a wooden pillar branching into loudspeakers, broadcasting a fictional narrative around Namak Nazar, a particle of salt tied to both the unraveling of climate systems and the possibility of renewal through introspection.

Experience the full @labiennale program from May 9 to November 22, 2026, and following along for more Desert X alumni artists who are participating in the Venice Biennale.
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Himali Singh Soin & David Tappeser / Hylozoic/Desires
“Namak Nazar”
Desert Hot Springs, California
Desert X 2023

Mixing and mastering by Tommie Introna & Brian J. Sulpizio. Production by Anton Lieberman, assisted by Brian Taylor. Cover image by @lance.gerber. taken in Coachella Valley by @davidsointappeser

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5 months ago

Namak Halal/ Namak Haram by Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin @himalisinghsoin and David Soin Tappeser @davidsointappeser)

On World Art Day, RMZ Foundation reflects on a work that reconsiders history through material, memory, and ecology. This monumental textile installation draws from the 4,000-kilometre Inland Customs Line, a colonial barrier that enforced the salt tax across the subcontinent. Yet, within this imposed boundary, a living hedge sustained its own ecology, persisting quietly against systems of control.

Using plant dyes, botanical grids and chaotic termite stamps derived from this landscape, the artists reclaim a contested history through an environmental lens in which resistance is embedded in both material and process.

𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘵 𝘓𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴 by Hylozoic/Desires was presented by Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum (@bdlmuseum), in collaboration with RMZ Foundation and India Art Fair (@indiaartfair) with curatorial advisor Tasneem Zakaria Mehta (@tzmehta), supported by Alkazi Foundation for the Arts. With special thanks to Vadehra Art Gallery (@vadehraartgallery)

#WorldArtDay #RMZFoundation #HimaliSinghSoin #DavidSoinTappeser #HylozoicDesires taken in Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum by @davidsointappeser

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6 months ago

We are pleased to announce the representation of artists Himali Singh Soin, David Soin Tappeser and their collective practice, Hylozoic/Desires.

Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser) is an artist duo whose work combines poetry and music to conjure speculative futures and multiverses. They aspire toward a flat ontological ether in which all forms of life – stone, spirit, machine or human – are equal. They use love as a force of attraction that holds otherwise distant entities together. Himali Singh Soin uses metaphors from the natural environment to construct imaginary cosmologies and David Soin Tappeser is a percussionist and composer whose practice explores socio-eco-spiritual-tempo-somatic dimensions of sound. Their work combines urgent themes of climate change, history and migration, myth and philosophy to tap into the flickering pulse of the contemporary.

Their work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at Tate Britain and Somerset House, London; the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai; Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid and the Art Institute of Chicago. They have recently participated in the inaugural Bukhara Biennale; Sharjah Biennial; Islamic Arts Biennial, Jeddah; Desert X, CA; Shanghai Biennale among others. They will participate in the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia curated by Koyo Kouoh.

Image details in the comments section. by @davidsointappeser

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7 months ago

𝘚𝘰𝘢𝘱 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘴, 𝘚𝘶𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘦𝘢, a solo exhibition by the artist duo Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser), is now on view at No.9 Cork Street, London.

𝘚𝘰𝘢𝘱 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘴, 𝘚𝘶𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘦𝘢 is how Pythagoras referred to salt. This show brings together three works across different media, revealing the disappearance of water bodies and the appearance of salt–a fortuneteller, a mineral mystic–in their wake.

The exhibition is on view until 28 March 2026.

[Vadehra Art Gallery, Himali Singh Soin, David Soin Tappeser, Hylozoic/Desires, contemporary art, solo exhibition, on view, Frieze, Cork Street galleries] taken in No.9 Cork Street by @davidsointappeser

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7 months ago

We’re delighted to announce that Himali Singh Soin (@himalisinghsoin) and David Soin Tappeser (@davidsointappeser) are invited to the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia: In Minor Keys @labiennale by Koyo Kouoh, from 09th May to 22nd November 2026!

The Avtar Foundation is honoured to support this presentation, along with @rmz_foundation and Foundation Henraux

Soin and Tappeser’s collaborative practice exists at the intersection of poetry, percussion and the environment. Through film and performance, they investigate the marginalised frequencies that resonate beneath grand narratives. By weaving together the geological and the lyrical, they invite us to listen to the planet as a witness, creating immersive environments that challenge linear ideas of progress and decay.

#BiennaleArte2026 #InMinorKeys by @davidsointappeser

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7 months ago

⚫️✨TOTAL ECLIPSE✨⚫️

✨Gong bath and readings at ‘Soap of the Sages, Sun of the Sea’ by Hylozoic/Desires✨

6 March 2026, 18.00-20.00 at Frieze, No. 9 Cork Street, London

🔭To mark the launch of TOTAL ECLIPSE by Annie Dillard, we gather beneath a different kind of sky.

☁️A gong bath by @davidsointappeser, like distant weather, will open the evening by guiding us inward.

🌚From this shared interiority, we move into readings by @himalisinghsoin and @sarah_shin_ from Dillard’s luminous essay, recounting her witnessing of the 1979 total solar eclipse in Yakima, Washington. The surreal intensity of the celestial event becomes a metaphysical reckoning. As shadow overtakes the sun, the ordinary world flickers and falls away. What can we know, and what remains beyond our reach?

⚡️This will be interleaved with readings from Himali Singh Soin’s poetic foreword to Total Eclipse, which extends the eclipse into our present tense of solar flares, data storms and mineral afterlives. ‘The world is otherworldly,’ she writes. What might it mean to sense signs, to read omens, to inhabit the hyper-enlightenment of our metallic age?

🌊The event unfolds within Hylozoic/Desires’ exhibition, which traces the disappearance of water bodies and the appearance of salt – a fortuneteller, a mineral mystic – in their wake. In this landscape of residue and prophecy, Dillard’s eclipse feels both historical and immediate: a brush with the sublime, the familiar turning strange. Together, through sound and text, we will enter the shadow’s brief, blazing clarity.

Free to attend, no booking required

🖼️: I and Thou, 2024 by Hylozoic/Desires. Dye sublimation on aluminium by @davidsointappeser

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8 months ago

On View | 𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘵 𝘓𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴

Tracing salt as memory, myth, and a witness to the climate crisis, the ongoing exhibition 𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘵 𝘓𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴 by Hylozoic/Desires (@himalisinghsoin & @davidsointappese) on view at Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, unfolds layered histories across the subcontinent.

In this video, Himali Singh Soin speaks about the 4000 km colonial customs barrier, 2500 km of which became ‘the Great Hedge of India,’ built by the East India Company to curb salt smuggling.

Moving between immersive visuals and rare photographs from the K. L. Nursey album (1930-1931),part of the Alkazi Collection of Photography, 𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘵 𝘓𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴 also revisits scenes from the Salt Satyagraha as experienced by local communities in Bombay, including women and children, foregrounding stories often left at the margins.

This exhibition is presented by Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, in collaboration with RMZ Foundation, and India Art Fair, with curatorial advisor @tzmehta, and supported by the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts.

𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘵 𝘓𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴 remains on view until 15 February 2026 at the Special Project Space, Museum Plaza, Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai.

Special thanks to @vadehraartgallery for additional support.

@bdlmuseum @rmz_foundation @indiaartfair

[saltlines, visual artists, indiaartfair, exhibitions, sourthasianart, mumbai, delhi, India, museum, history, women, resistance, erasure, archives, ecology]

#SaltLines #HylozoicDesires #HimaliSinghSoin #DavidSoinTappeser #ContemporaryArt #ArtExhibition #MuseumExhibition #IndianArt #SouthAsianArt #ColonialHistory #DandiMarch #ClimateAndArt #ArtAndEcology #MumbaiArt #BDLMuseum #IndiaArtFair #RMZFoundation #ArtInMumbai #ExhibitionOnView #VisualArt #Photographs #PhotographyExhibit #CulturalExpressions #ArtistsInIndia #ArtAppreciation #IndiaArtScene #VisualStorytelling #ArtInMumbai #MuseumExhibition by @davidsointappeser

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9 months ago

This salty year began when we premiered ‘The Hedge of Halomancy’ in Sharjah @sharjahart, once part of the Indian Empire, where salt became a symbol of liberation. We then brought an extended series of these works - exploring the British empire’s ‘Great Salt Hedge’ across India - to Somerset House’s courtyard and Tate Britain’s Art Now in London - two institutions deeply entwined with Britain’s colonial past.

The year comes to a close with the entire series returning to India, to Bombay’s Bhau Daji Lad Museum (@bdlmuseum )- another institution with deep colonial roots. Founded in 1857 as the ‘Victoria and Albert Museum’ in order to promote trade within the Empire, its ghosts resonate deeply with the ‘old customs hedge’…

It took a lot of patrons, curators, technicians, cinematographers, editors, artisans and friends to build this massive infrastructure, and to tour it ecologically and still allow it to be porous in whatever new context it sat.

First the mystery of the hedge, and then everyone’s generosity, curiosity and rebellion in telling its story, has humbled us and heartened us.

Salt Lines came to Bombay after Tasneem (@tzmehta ) saw it at Tate Britain and together with the team at BDL, made it manifest! Umah (@umahjacob) at IAF (@indiaartfair ) and Kamna (@kamnakamna ) at RMZ (@rmz_foundation ) rewrote borders to bring it over! Thank you @anumenda 🌱Raahab (@rahaaballana) at Alkazi Foundation meanwhile opened Disobedient Subjects at CSMVS, and its focus on Salt and Satyagraha seemed like an uncanny link. Sukanya (@suk.anya.gho.sh ) designed the posters and the exhibition and we laughed and laughed. And— @raw_mango, for hosting the salt-rimmed after-party, and reminding us of the new old things that will always resist, persist.

Photos courtesy of RMZ Foundation by @davidsointappeser

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10 months ago