Artists

Dev Dhunsi

Press release

Andréhn-Schiptjenko is pleased to present the opening of Dev Dhunsi's first solo exhibition with the gallery, Unmistakably You, opening on Thursday, 9 April, between 17:00 – 20:00. Unmistakably You at Andréhn-Schiptjenko is an extension of Dhunsi's concurrently presented solo exhibition, bearing the same title, at Nitja Centre for Contemporary Art in Lillestrøm, Norway. As a foundation for the exhibition lays his recently published photobook Mixed (2026), published by SPBH Editions / Mack Books. The project was awarded the 2024 Nordic Photobook Award. Photographs printed on linen, tapestry and archival fragments unfold in the exhibition space. Exploring the intersection of language and identity, Dhunsi's project stems from the question: what happens when language fails to name lived experience? Starting out from a reflection on the absence of a word in Norwegian to describe "mixed" without reproducing ideas of race, Dhunsi here approaches identity as a shifting, porous process, in contrast to the idea of a fixed category. Fluidity holds in different aspects a crucial part in Dhunsi's work - both in his visual language, the materials used and the subjects his lens-based practice depicts. Blurred, colour-inverted or partially concealed the subjects in his photographs are never fully revealed to the viewer, instead they enter a place where metaphor, symbols and mythology intertwines. In his practice, Dhunsi considers the authoritarian, historical aspects of depiction as a way of controlling narratives, as well as the subjects and environments depicted. In the exhibition room, archival images from the former State Institute for Racial Biology in Uppsala, Sweden, emerge from the floor. Partly visible, yet still concealed, they serve as historical traces and as reminders of how classification, visibility and violence are inscribed in the history of both images and institutions. This visual representation is a stark contrast to his own method, where the images grew out of conversations he had with the people depicted, leaning into a lack of direction and allowing for the subject's own preference of self-representation.