Lubna Chowdhary

Temporal Trace - artist film

Temporal Trace is a public art commission by Lubna Chowdhary on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, which stretches through the terraces to Waterfront Square outside V&A East as part of East Bank. Chowdhary’s work often draws on cultural hybridity, looking at sources, ideas, material and process from both the East and the West. In Temporal Trace, Lubna explores how thresholds are treated in South Asia, in particular the tradition of kolam, where intricate rice flour patterns are created daily at the thresholds of buildings to welcome people or benign spirits.

The film explores Lubna’s process in responding to the commission and documents the installation process, where the movements of workers Daniel and Adrian echo how kolams are created. The film also includes footage of Are you here for the meeting?a beautiful dance piece created by Stacked Wonky and performed as part of the Greenwich+Docklands Internal Festival in 2024, and which uses Temporal Trace as a canvas. Are you here for the meeting? explores ideas around youth voice in decision making amongst the global clamour for power, it was devised and performed by it’s young creators.

Temporal Trace is an artwork by Lubna Chowdhary, commissioned by LLDC and curated by Louise Trodden for East Bank, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The film is a collaboration with Louise Trodden and Ruth Lin Wong Holmes, with still photos by Thierry Bal. My thanks to Dilip, Ramani, Sheela, Kathiresan, Helen Rani, Neeta Bansal and P Mani for organising and sending through their kolam creation footage.

Are you here for the meeting? Devised and performed by Minna Allenby, Ethan Keal, Leo Konrad, Ernie Shorten, Lenny Shorten, Mahala Tucker and Iola Tompson

Original creation - Jack Gardner, Niamh Keady, Stuart Pelling and Katie Smith, Artistic Direction - Sarah Shorten, Music - Sebastian Tesouro, Design - Angie Newbold