Divided Selves, a contemporary art exhibition exploring ideas of identity, community, nationhood and conflict, will enter its second phase at Herbert Art Gallery & Museum in Coventry next month.

Running since February 2023, Divided Selves has already become one of the most visited temporary exhibitions in the gallery’s history, and Dippy, the life size Diplodocus replica on loan from the Natural History Museum for the next three years, has been credited with encouraging the record footfall.

The exhibition, which will conclude on 24 September, features work from the British Council Collection and the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum’s collection – with its curator Hammad Nasar featuring revered artists from a range of backgrounds working across a host of mediums, including Turner Prize winners.

Nasar said the potential for galleries outside London to resonate with people who don’t normally consume art was huge, and that the Herbert has shown how the key ingredient for participation is a curious audience.

Split across four galleries, the first part of the exhibition addresses nation states and historic anniversaries of partitions and subsequent violence, while the second pays attention to cultural narratives that create resilience and reenforce identities through community.

From 10 June, new immersive and digital works will feature in the two remaining galleries including Aziz Hazara’s Eyes in the Sky, a video installation which features drone footage of young people finding and then playing with a disused military tank, and ‘Rehearsal’, which also looks at the relationship between play and war.

Hetain Patel’s Don’t Look at the Finger, which uses physical performance, sign language, and martial  arts to portray the emotions, rituals, and dialogue between a couple as they participate in an arranged marriage, features in the final gallery space.

Memorial to Lost Words, a sound installation by Bani Abidi, features archival letters printed on vinyl attached to the windows of the Chapel of Christ the Servant at Coventry Cathedral, originally written by Indian soldiers who served in the First World War.

The installation, which is soundtracked by renditions of Indian folk songs, will run at Coventry Cathedral  until 27 July. It draws from letters that were sent home by Indian soldiers but were originally censored or forgotten because of their condemnation of the war, and folk songs that were sung by their wives, mothers and sisters at the time.

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