The Bruce Museum Presents Rohini Devasher’s First U.S. Institutional Exhibition
‘Solar Poetics’ traces the evolution of solar observation with a four-channel film and embellished works on copper
Art and science intersect for an immersive cosmic experience in “Rohini Devasher: Solar Poetics,” on view Aug. 22-Nov. 29 at the Bruce Museum. The exhibition, Rohini Devasher’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States, is anchored by the artist’s “One Hundred Thousand Suns” (2023), a four-channel video installation new to the Museum’s collection. The film transports visitors beyond Earth’s atmosphere with imagery tracing a century of solar observation, from drawings and photographic techniques to first-person accounts from eclipse chasers, who travel the globe to witness them. The film’s title references the Kodaikanal Solar Observatory in India, whose archive of approximately 157,000 sun portraits have been a source of imagery and inspiration for Devasher. “Solar Poetics” pairs the film with the artist’s copper works, showcasing Devasher’s ongoing engagement with astronomy and natural phenomena and affirming the Bruce's place as a museum where art and science inform one another.
In “One Hundred Thousand Suns,” Devasher (b. 1978, New Delhi) draws on the Kodaikanal Solar Observatory’s historical glass photographic plates and hand-drawn sunspot observations, layering them with contemporary imagery from NASA, global astronomical observatories, and her own data collections. Every day since 1904, weather permitting, the Observatory’s researchers have captured images of the sun, building a monumental archive that spans nearly 125 years or 11 solar cycles.
“What draws me to Rohini Devasher's work is how completely it joins art and science. She works as a researcher, assembling a century of solar observation, and she shows us that scientists are moved by the same mystery and magic that move artists. In the end, we are all trying to understand our world. That is why the Bruce Museum holds science and art together,” said Mary-Kate O’Hare, Ph.D., the Bruce Museum’s Susan E. Lynch Executive Director and CEO and curator of the exhibition.
"One Hundred Thousand Suns" plays simultaneously across four screens, each a “Paradigm,” Devasher’s term for a distinct way of observing the sun:
- “Site” turns to the Kodaikanal Solar Observatory itself, its instruments, and the people who run it, some of them the fourth generation of their families to record the sun there. “Site” also traces the Observatory's history to its founding in 1899, when it took over the work of the Madras Observatory, established in 1786.
- “Drawing the Sun” gathers naked-eye observations made by hand at the Observatory between 1902 and 1904.
- “Twin Suns” considers the sun as at once knowable and unknowable, drawing on 19th-century glass-plate astrophotography.
- “Eclipse” offers a meditation on light and memory, with footage of dust captured during an eclipse, caught in a beam of light in the Observatory's 60-meter tunnel telescope.
Each paradigm carries its own layer of sound, drawn from voices, data, and music. Devasher includes the voices of those who have devoted their lives to studying the sun, among them fellow amateur astronomers, eclipse chasers, and the historian of science Lorraine Daston, Director Emerita of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, all of whom Devasher interviewed for the film.
“One Hundred Thousand Suns” will be accompanied by a selection of Devasher's Shadow Portraits (2023) and Sol Drawings (2023)—intimate works on copper created with fumage, a technique of drawing with smoke. Using her kitchen stove and candle smoke, alongside interventions like acid washing and embossment, Devasher creates patterns ranging from solar flares and sunspots to plumage-like growths, their surfaces shifting between blue-purple hues and golden copper. These works reveal her patient, handmade process alongside the monumental film installation.
“Solar Poetics” is organized by the Bruce Museum and will be complemented with a slate of special programming, including an artist talk on September 22, and a family day with interactive planetarium shows and hands-on intergenerational workshops.
