Paper Trails: Navigating the T.K. Sabapathy Archives 

Twentieth-century scholars often thought of archives in geological terms: like sedimentary strata, archives accumulated slowly over time and recorded evidence of past events. But could we imagine archives as both vertical and horizontal, through metaphors of both geology and geography?

Paper Trails: Navigating the T.K. Sabapathy Archives showcases original documents, photographs, books, and artworks donated by the art historian, educator, writer and curator T.K. Sabapathy, as well as textual interventions by practitioners and students who have worked with these materials. Grounded in ideas from archival theory and practice, the display samples NUS Museum’s archival holdings, acting as an interstitial way of presenting these records to the public while the Museum continues its archiving processes.

In Paper Trails, an archive is figured as a vast geographical terrain through which we all navigate individually, but whose complexities can only be grasped collectively — a place of infinite pathways and possibilities. Rachel Lim, who graduated from NUS FASS in 2022, curates this display to distil the invisible and ongoing processes of archiving the holdings. Supervised by the Museum’s Curatorial Lead Siddharta Perez, Rachel co-conceived Paper Trails with Community Engagement’s Wardah Mohamad and Collections Officer Devi Murugaya.

Come explore the display Paper Trails: Navigating the T.K. Sabapathy Archives, open from 16 Nov onwards!