“Should the starting-point for the understanding of history be ideology, or politics, or religion, or economics? Should we try to understand a doctrine from its overt content, or from the psychological makeup and the biography of its author? We must seek an understanding from all these angles simultaneously, everything has meaning, and we shall find this same structure of being underlying all relationships. All these views are true provided that they are not isolated, that we delve deeply into history and reach the unique core of existential meaning which emerges in each perspective.

Perception is the background of experience which guides every conscious action. The world is a field for perception, and human consciousness assigns meaning to the world.”- Merleau Ponty

We cannot separate ourselves from our perceptions of the world . The human body is an expressive space which contributes to the significance of personal actions. The body is also the origin of expressive movement, and is a medium for perception of the world. Bodily experience gives perception a meaning beyond that established simply by thought. Thus, Descartes’ cogito ("I think, therefore I am") does not account for how consciousness is influenced by the spatiality of a person’s own body.

Notions of consciousness, perception and the construction of identity has been a recurring Leif motif in many of my curatorial trajectories. Ardhnarisvara, Androgyne, Borderless Terrrain, Deshi and Margi, Singular Identiys

Seen under the angle of a narrative identity my question is how these changes are reflected in the individuals' self-narratives in general and, more specifically, in the cultural construction of these narratives which influence visual culture . I want to briefly discuss postmodernist attacks on identity , perception and the self and questions arising from this discussion for the analysis of self-narratives. Let me briefly summarize my arguments:

1) Perception, consciousness and self has also been the concern of artists ever since art practice emerged Therefore in the production of art does identity have a social construct?

2) Is it singular identity within a global context ?

3) With the breaking down of cultural barriers is there a move towards the macro- spaces of globality?

4) Questioning notions of plurality, hybridity , migration, transculturalization, gender probing from the transsexual to the transgendered, heterogeneity , nationality and nationhood in understanding ideas of self and identity.

5) I shall propose to understand and explain this concept with the help of the visual culture , which characterizes and celebrates this difference.

Although the concept of identity has a long tradition , the idea of an identity which can be constructed by each and every person is a rather new one, that is to say about 200 years old. It is closely linked to the beginning of the so-called modernity.

"According to anthropological folklore, in traditional societies, one's identity was fixed, solid, and stable. Identity was a function of predefined social roles and a traditional system of myths which provided orientation and religious sanctions to one's place ' in the world, while rigorously circumscribing the realm of thought and behaviour. Birth and death of an individual was within a clan, a member of a fixed kinship system, and a member of one's tribe or group with the trajectory of life fixed in advance. In pre-modern societies, identity was unproblematic and not subject to reflection or discussion. Individuals did not undergo identity crises, or radically modify their identity.” - Kellner

In modernity, identity is slowly becoming subject to change and innovation. Mobility, multiplicity, self-reflexiveness are characteristic for modern identities.

What does it mean to be socially constructed? It was once believed that what we do externally reflects what we are on the inside. But if there is no "inside," we must rely on that which is outside to define us. We are products of external forces over which we have varying levels of control. The suspicious postmodernist sees us as having little control at all over the forces impinging upon us.

In the case of diasporas, exiles, immigrants and emigrants, struggles with dislocation and recognition of the empowering potential remain a constant engagement. And within such a milieu, identity is not discovered but established by acts of self-representation that are political. Certain kinds of cultural forms had to be negotiated in the process of identity construction becoming, in the bargain, an establishment of differences as well as an accretion of experiences. Where the individual ‘self’ has become in itself a universal topic.

Borderless Terrain

Is there is a singular Identity within a global context , when the world is shrinking and turning into a global village. Is it singular? multiple ? dual? or even fused. Which intersections does it emphasize, which points of reference resonate? A globe called home, yet a search for imaginary homelands? A polyglot culture, where every being is in tumultuous transit between identities? Or composite identities, perhaps a current reality?

The post modern thought see ‘identity’ as something fragmentary and dynamic, rather than static. Seeing in this way the individual has different identities in different social situations. The questions of identity ‘now’ orbit around the development of new identities and homogenous cultures which stand in contrast to the hybrid plural ethnicities . Leading to tribulations of dislocation of identity and problems of identity fragmentation , the splintering of culture into diverse sub- cultures, the spread of mass- media culture, and the clash of social values "Identity is neither continuous nor continuously interrupted but constantly framed between the simultaneous vectors of similarity, continuity and difference." (Stuart Hall).

This question of identity carries valence for artists particularly in the age of globalization where boundaries are not so definite and the dynamic interactive process through diverse media takes precedence which is essentially observable in the virtual space that has shrunk the world to a small screen. Suggesting a brave new terrain where the poetry of visual arts often completed in the imagination of the viewer. Globalization has been the tendency to treat history, culture and political economy as a world system with the possibility of reducing it to a single and unique point of view. ( the singular IndentiyS show)

Art today is becoming a living statement of the effect of globalization and of the acceptance of the diaspora by the host society. Signaling a shift away from the history of visual art as a single narrative which distinguishes itself from the inheritance of aesthetic traditions and including in itself the demands of the twentieth century . Inhabiting itself in the ‘now’ of the increasingly common international biennales, with their gatherings of diverse and maybe even incommensurable practices, generating communications and confusions in the mélange of practices from the disparate cultures; the ‘now’ of international exchanges today in business, politics, leisure and culture , operation though the power , speed and relative availability of airtravel and teletechnologies such as e- mail and web, the now in which different cultures and ethnicities face, meet or confront one another for all sorts of reasons , sometimes by choice and sometimes not, differentiating the boundaries and horizons of social and cultural bodies in the process, the now of economic globalization , the now of cultural , symbolic borrowings, appropriation , assimilation and transformation in the international context both at the individuals and collective imaginaries. What it all proposes is a critical articulation of contemporary cultural practices and their presentation, and of what contemporaniety might infact be. The immediate challenges are clear : bringing together artists from different geographical and cultural zones into a single exhibition space.

The Indian art scene against this back drop is gaining new grounds, signaling a whole new world of images , while retaining its cultural traditions . (Margi and the Desi show) becoming home to a large number of outstanding intellectuals and authors of the- the art technology and ancient forms of culture, which meet and merge in India. A duality exists in India where the ancient and the cyber- age coexist.