Salt Lines unearths a vanished border and the afterlives of empire

Salt has a way of clinging to the skin, tightening, crystallising, leaving a residue that refuses to disappear. In Salt Lines, the first institutional solo exhibition in India by Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser), salt becomes a witness to a profound act of erasure. Presented in collaboration with the RMZ Foundation and India Art Fair, and supported by the Alkazi Foundation, the exhibition opens on 5 December 2025 at the Special Project Space of the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai.

Salt Lines is an exhibition which moves between textile, video, sound and photography

The project is rooted in the Inland Customs Line, a structure that once stretched across the subcontinent for almost 4,000 kilometres. Close to 2,500 kilometres of this border was constituted by an immense plantation barrier known as the Great Hedge of India. Built by the British to enforce a monopoly on salt, it carved through villages and fields, creating a network of restrictions that shaped everyday life until independence. After the British took control of Sambhar Lake in 1879, the Line was gradually abandoned. Today, it is nearly absent from public memory.

Hylozoic/Desires first encountered this forgotten border while researching another salt-based work. “We first stumbled upon a mention of the hedge when conducting more general research for our first salt-related work, Namak Nazar(2023),” they explain.

“Even though it was only one or two paragraphs long, the idea of a planted hedge running across the subcontinent immediately captured our imagination. The fact that no one we knew had heard about it, much less so learned about it at school, despite the central role of the British salt monopoly in the Indian independence movement, piqued our interest further and marked the beginning of a two year journey across archives and primary sources.”

That discovery set the tone for an exhibition that dwells in the gap between the recorded and the unrecorded. The duo approach the hedge not as static infrastructure but as something unsettled and transforming. “For us, the hedge becomes a powerful symbol at so many levels,” they add. “It epitomises the slow violence of colonial extraction, a partition of land that begets further partitions, the weaponisation of nature, but also the porosity of imagined borders, the ultimate insubordination of flora and fauna, and the healing potential hidden amongst it all. We really felt this story needed to be told.”

The exhibition moves between textile, video, sound and photography, each medium used to draw out a different aspect of the hedge’s ghostly presence. “Using the nineteenth century photographic technique of salt prints to develop the images, salt itself becomes part of the work’s materiality,” they explain.

“For namak halal/namak haram, the large outside installation in the museum plaza at BDL, we used block-printed textiles. Whereas the blocks mimic the stamps of colonial bureaucracy, some of the dyes are extracted from plant species that constituted the historical hedge. In other words, every medium connects to the story that we try to tell through it.”

The Inland Customs Line enforced control not only over movement but also over the natural world. “Borders are a lot more fictional, porous and impermanent than we make them out to be,” the duo observe. “We have to remind ourselves that they are mostly short-lived, human artefacts. Yet the violence and suffering they impose is often all too real. Revisiting the history of the Inland Customs Line is perhaps a way of drawing attention to the present day proliferation of borders, divisions and segregations that cause immense heartbreak, but are ultimately futile and fictional. In a way, it is devastating and hopeful at once.”

The partnership across RMZ Foundation, India Art Fair and the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum reflects a growing ecology of interdisciplinary support. “This collaboration signals that cultural work takes on deeper meaning when institutions come together in trust and for a common purpose,” Anu Menda, Chair, RMZ Foundation, explains. “It shows how museums, foundations and fairs can collaborate to create the platforms and audiences needed for the growth of an artist.”

As Salt Lines draws visitors into the dispersed remnants of a largely forgotten colonial project, it also opens a wider field of reflection. The hedge may no longer stand, yet its afterlife circulates in the landscape and in the bureaucratic habits that shape contemporary life. By weaving archival fragments with imaginative possibility, Hylozoic/Desires invite viewers to attend to that afterlife with care. The exhibition does not attempt to restore what has vanished. Instead, it offers a way to move through the gaps, to notice what flickers at the edges of sight, and to recognise that the past continues to settle and resettle around us.

Salt Lines By Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser). In collaboration with RMZ Foundation and India Art Fair, supported by Alkazi Foundation.

On view from Dec 06 2025 to Feb 08 2026 at Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai.

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