The title of Zarina Bhimji’s latest film, Yellow Patch, 2011, gives away no secrets, and having watched it, viewers are none the wiser. We know it was shot in India; that Bhimji has been researching it for years; that it is about “the history of trade and migration between India and Africa.” The catalogue tells us so. And yet such explanations don’t dispel our transfixed bafflement as we imbibe its nearly thirty minutes’ worth of footage. We see the old Port Trust offices in Mumbai, with their piles of fraying paperwork and aimlessly whirring fans; gorgeously decaying mansions in Gujarat, with their pastel-green peeling walls and sadly tinkling chandeliers; the beige desert landscape of the Rann of Kutch (at the border between India and Pakistan); and close-ups of a vast ship under construction. Suddenly, the camera settles on a rotting, cream-hued statue of the aging Queen Victoria, who seems to preside over the film like a decomposing ghoul. Does her bulky presence provide a clue? Is Yellow Patch about the end of the British Empire in particular and about the entropy of grandeur in general? Maybe, but while Bhimji’s poignant images seem soaked in significance, they only hint at stories we are never told.

Yellow Patch may be a documentary, but, instead of interviews and didactic voice-overs the buzz of insects, the muffled sounds of political speeches, and the shrill call of a peacock are interspersed with Sufi love songs. Bhimji is often grouped with the “new wave” of artist- filmmakers such as Raqs Media Collective and New Delhi–based Amar Kanwar as well as the verbose London-based Otolith Group, who give the conventional idea of documentary-as-truth-telling-narrative a rough ride. Okwui Enwezor, seen as the patron saint of this mode, commissioned Bhimji’s Out of Blue, 2002, a lyrical, elusive production “about” Uganda, for Documenta 11. Both films were part of Bhimji’s midcareer retrospective, curated by Achim Borchardt-Hume, chief curator at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. Along with films, the twenty-five-year survey included light boxes, photographs, and installations. Bhimji (who was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2007) was born in Mbarara, Uganda, but fled with her family to London when she was eleven years old in 1974, in the wake of Idi Amin’s expulsion of Uganda’s Asian population two years earlier. Given her background, it is tempting to overlay Bhimji’s light-saturated imagery with political intentions. And her early works speak straightforwardly about otherness. In Friendly, 1998, an advertisement from a newspaper for a public auction in 1771 is etched onto a mirror. The gray words read FRIENDLY, OFFICIOUS, SOUND-HEALTHY, FOND OF LABOUR AND FOR COLOUR, AN EXCELLENT FINE BLACK. Looking into the glass to read the text, I saw my own face. The self is reflected in the other, and vice versa, I quickly surmised.

Yet the fact that Friendly was displayed on the second floor meant we encountered it after viewing Bhimji’s more ambiguous recent ventures. In her latest offerings, obvious signs of violence, loss, and disenfranchisement have melted away, leaving only faint residues. Perhaps they enact rather than state the fact of displacement. “As I worked further I kept coming back to disconnection and belatedness,” confesses Bhimji. In her best work, we feel as if we have arrived too late, missed the main event. The pale gold photograph Shadows and Disturbances, 2007, shows the facade of a crumbling haveli (Urdu for “mansion”). Perhaps, once upon a time, it belonged to an Indian prince; now its ornate mother-of-pearl mosaic appears despoiled by time (or trauma). Beauty is never so affecting as when it is about to disappear.

—Zehra Jumabhoy