A haze envelops the region. In its make and density, it presents both, a reality that we must come to terms with and a reminder of our collective pasts and possible futures.
Truth in itself, has become a void within which fabricated narratives thrive - a return to mythological pasts and fake news; misinformation – that evolves into spaces of devotional, nationalistic, unreasonable passions.
I. Were stars the first language? How did we navigate on a clouded night?
In the beginning language was infinite, an un-ending possibility of stars, stitched together as inscriptions by invisible lines. In the replication of nature’s forms, scratched onto rocks and soil; and an unending cartography by feet – earth was seamless, malleable.
Central to this human pursuit was the courage of the “changed heart”. This is how we perhaps discovered freedom. This walk was once pilgrimage, exodus, discovery and a measure. Today, this walk is forbidden by fences and boundaries, borders. But it survives as a protest, a march, a form of dissent.
The distance from home measured in – the arrival, the wait and the (sometimes endless) hope/possibility of return – and is spread across geological time, emotional time.
II. To spray, like vermin!
Image: A group of migrant labourers were intercepted and sprayed with disinfectants by men in hazmat suits.
They were amongst the thousands that set out on foot to towards their homes. Trains and buses were suspended. A day long curfew during the onset of the pandemic was now stretched to weeks. Dehydrated, fatigued bodies were intercepted at various points and moved from the visibility of highways to longer, more out-of-sight paths. They were now labelled carriers of the virus, mass-spreaders.
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There are many forms of violence to be read in these forms of humiliation and abandonment. This dispossession is of the most vulnerable segments of our ‘society’ and extractive economic systems is not new, but is more frequent than ever. The non-contractual labouring body is not protected by law or policy, and remains without much agency, and thereby redressal and justice.
The system must still control the movement of those it has abandoned. These rogue images and the narratives they create must be controlled as well.
III. Toxicities
A dense fog covers the distance. It sometimes smells like a flower. With each breath, a dizzying, soft pain fills the head – an intoxication almost.
The thing about smog is that it is as much inside you as it is outside. Like breath it fills your lungs but you can taste, smell it. Intoxication is a condition of both power and those that submit to it.
The ingestion of the toxic also triggers a form of adaptation, mutation perhaps. The body and its immunities must come to terms or compromise with the alien.
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There is another kind of toxicity that inhabits the mind and is a symptom of power or the assertion or imagination of it.
There is a glow to this toxicity – like shiny material – or density as dark as contaminated, foamy waters.
IV. Alchemy and Magic.
In the distance and through the haze, enchanting flickers of light emerge. It calls out to the fisherman they say, luring them into deep waters until they are lost. Swirling above the swamp, they never touch its waters. The mist does not know what it is to be wet, to be drenched. It was perhaps born of the same water but could never rise to be a cloud. It remains in between.
This in-between-ness is the condition of our present; a suspension across the region. The failure to acknowledge the damage of the self and community that this suspension brings, comes from the enchantment of this flickering light in the distance. A theatre by the forces in power, that know distraction is the means to avoid accountability. Here ideas of development, religious and ethnic superiority and a claim to the land, shine through and beyond the haze. We are made to feel like we are moving towards something, but in truth, we remain suspended.
The unknown or the not-so-visible-yet, is also magic, alchemy perhaps, of people held to the land and spirits that couldn’t rise to clouds.
V. In the Sea, even those who do not believe, float.
To draw the sea, is to draw restlessness - a constant performance of forms and force.
In the distance, a ship emerges. It is hard to tell if it is returning home or if we are to lose her to the horizon.
Water has memory. It remembers everything that passes through it; even those that resigned to its depths.
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The rise of nationalism and its majoritarian politics in India; an economic crisis and ensuing political instabilities in Pakistan and Sri Lanka; authoritarian crackdowns on free speech with arrests of critics, and media personnel are more common and unchecked than ever. The walls that separate us as people are higher to scale. Hatred and fear are tools used to disempower minorities.
The haze then is mist, smog, smoke, fog, toxicity and magic – it engulfs the distance to remind us of the fragility of the present, the immediate. To work with the unknown is also an opportunity to conjure new visions – that may present itself in time and it commands consistent work and care.
Through 21 South Asian practices, the exhibition attempts to make 'region' through the porosity and possibility of stories and legends, residues and memorials (graves perhaps); and a summoning of spirits and energies in a time marked by polarizing, violent politics and majoritarianism. The haze does not take away the future from us, it in fact presents us with possibility and an acute awareness of the present – of where we stand now and how the act of living in itself has become a form of resistance.
-Mario D’souza
Untitled I, 212.09 x 114.55 cm, conte & pastel on paper, 2020
THE ROCK NEEDS NO WATER AND THE ISLAND NEVER CRIES, after a song by Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel, Performance residue
All Is Water, And To Water We Must Return, 165.1 x 165.1 x 25.4 cm, kinetic sculpture; fibreglass, paint, water, timer and motor, 2021, Courtesy of the artist and Experimenter, Kolkata
Greys are to be listened; are to be felt, 221 x 221 x 30.5 cm, charcoal on wood, cotton belt, clothing, ratchet tensioner, 2022
Untitled I, 212.09 x 114.55 cm, conte & pastel on paper, 2020
Security Barriers A–Z, 28 x 44 cm each, inkjet print, 2008/ 2019, Courtesy of the artist and Experimenter, Kolkata
What is Human Becomes Animal?, ink on paper, 2017 - 2019
Stagnant, ink on paper, 2019 - 2022
Gaze Under your Skin, ink on paper, 2022
Gaze Under your Skin, 20 x 8 x 9 cm, cast iron, 2022
North Sea (A) & (Z), 29.84 x 20.32 cm (each), c-print on aluminium, 2/3 and 2 AP, 1994, Courtesy of Grey Noise, Dubai
Pegasus Reef 19, 20, 29.84 x 20.32 cm, digital print on photo rag paper, 2/3 and 2 AP, 1996, Courtesy of Grey Noise, Dubai
Untitled, 101.5 x 75.8 cm, graphite on paper, unique, 2003, Courtesy of Maryam Rahman & Grey Noise, Dubai
Of Rock and Apricot and Mountaintop, from the series Thread Whispers II, 129.54 x 86.36 cm, digital print on archival paper, 1/5, 2017
Pallampiddi Map, 91 x 66 cm, work on printed map, ink and pencil on paper, 2014
Kokkilai, 91 x 66 cm, work on printed map, ink and pencil on paper, 2017
Southasia Himal, 49 x 44 cm, work on printed map, ink and pencil on paper, 2017
Mannar Map, 91 x 66 cm, work on printed map, ink and pencil on paper, 2017
Generation Wish Yielding Tress and Atomic Tree 38 and 26, 60 x 42 cm, ink pen on paper, 2021 Courtesy of the artist and Jhaveri Contemporary, Bombay
Trying Matter, 34.5 x 24.5 cm, water colour and pencil on paper, 2018
Enemy at the Door, 24.63 x 17.01 cm, water colour and gouache on paper, 2018
Podium, 80 x 120 cm, archival inkjet print - diasec mounted, 2016, from the series WORK (ERS)
Site for Subodh, 80 x 120 cm, archival inkjet print - diasec mounted, 2016, from the series WORK (ERS)
Transmigration - II, 269.5 x 160 cm, gouache & pigment on paper, unique, 2018
Spiritual Machine, variable, copper, brass, wood, steel, parafin wax, 2022
Beneath a steel sky, variable, video sculpture, 2 mins (loop), 2019
Seeking Sanjeevani, site specific installation 12 typewritten text/paper collages, 30.48 x 25.4 cm each, 35 mm slide projections (12 images), fabric, sound, wood, variable, 2022
THE ROCK NEEDS NO WATER AND THE ISLAND NEVER CRIES, after a song by Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel, Performance residue
The Rock Needs No Water And The Island Never Cries, After A Song By Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel saw Nikhil Chopra and Romain Loustau make a familiar landscape strange. Through a fracturing of a pristine landscape, new forms erupt. Sharp monolith-like rocks after Romain’s sculpture, pierce out of the ocean as fires burn and smokes fill Chopra’s charcoal on canvas. To the sounds of Loustau, Chopra draws his contemplation on fire – as a process of conversion like wood to ash – and on air. The destruction of the pristine is presented as a vision of the future.