Social Memory and Spatial Construction: Fiza Khatri and Kirtika Kain at No.9 Cork Street

No.9 Cork Street in London brings together under one roof two powerful practices questioning identity, history, and social hierarchies through a presentation by Jhaveri Contemporary. While Fiza Khatri’s new works titled “The Great Rebuild!” focus on queer and feminist space-making processes, Kirtika Kain’s “Chronicles” series examines intergenerational trauma and the rigid structures brought by the caste system through Dalit identity.

Fiza Khatri centers collective solidarity and inclusive living spaces in her canvas works. The artist’s oil painting titled Brick Library (2026) treats brick and architectural elements as symbols of a feminist construction process, working through the idea of building new spaces in place of rigid social molds.

Kirtika Kain, on the other hand, sets out from her own genealogy and the historical experiences of the Dalit community. Exhibited with the support of the Kochi Biennale Foundation, her work Chronicles (2025), constructed on copper plates, records a social memory that has been sought to be rendered invisible by engraving it onto the durable surface of metal. The material language of copper transforms into an expression of resistance against historical oppression and refusing to remain silent.

While Khatri constructs new spaces through the liberating possibilities of paint, Kain exposes rigid hierarchies through the materiality of metal; both artists invite viewers to rethink the traces left on us by history and social structures at No.9 Cork Street.