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‘The
process of identification with culture is one of
adopting the behavioural code, learning to “do
the conversation”, and associating within the
community literally or symbolically. Identity
means orienting self towards particular cultural
frameworks while defining, negotiating and
reconstructing aspects of self in interaction with
others. Therefore Identity refers to how to know
one self.
-
( Michael L.Hecht – in African American
communities)
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 Perception, consciousness and self has been the
concern of artists ever since art practice emerged
.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
.Therefore in the production of art does identity
have a social construct?Is it singular identity
within a global context ? With the breaking down
of cultural barriers is there a move towards the
macro- spaces of globality? Questioning notions of
plurality, hybridity , migration,
transculturalization, gender probing from the
transsexual to the transgendered, heterogeneity ,
nationality and nationhood ,is the understanding
of self and identity constructed?
These
are questions posed , challenged and questioned in
the 21st
century, where identity is becoming subject to
change and innovation. 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. identity in this
becomes 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. Becoming 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.
The
sense of identity is multi- faceted and complex
and has a long tradition .
"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
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.
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 . 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 .
Dr.
Alka Pande
Curator
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