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Singular
Identitys
'India's
cities are hinges between its vast population
spread across the countryside and the hectic tides
of global economy, with its ruthlessly shifting
tastes and its ceaseless murmur of the pleasures
and hazards of modernity. This three- cornered
relationship decisively mould India's future
economic, cultura1 and political possibilities.
The demographic drift across the world is
unstoppably towards the urban.' 'Modern India's
political and economic experiences have coincided
most dramatically in its cities- symbols of the
uneven, hectic and contradictory character of the
nation's modem life. From the ancient sacred space
of Benares to the decaying colonial pomp of
Calcutta, from the high rationalism of Chandigarh
to the software utopia of Bangalore, from Bombay's
uneasy blend of parochial politics and
cosmopolitan to the thrusting new cities of the
north... The evident urban dysjunctures have
enlivened distinct political sentiments. ..
The real and imagined experience of the city have
individually and together reconstituted both the
nature and the range of the selves, the'identities'
that indians can call their own.'
-
Sunil Khilnani (The Idea Of India)
If
Is there a singular identity within a global
context, when the world is shrinking and turning
into a global village. The title itself is meant
to provoke and tease both the practitioner and the
viewer to relook at identity. 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?
Art
today becomes an exciting statement of the
cultural diversity mapping diverse geographies.
Homogeneity, which emerges as a by- product of
globalization, leads to the growing importance of
nudging the cultural producer to look for the
celebration of the difference.
The
trauma of post modernism is that we seem to be
everywhere at once; so many different positions
seem to be available to us in our perceptions of
art. If we are living in the west, our journey may
threaten to take us back in time and to transplant
us to many locations on other parts of the globe.
Art emerging from different areas have changed the
trope of the debate, leading to a new emergence of
ideas of internationalism, a new perspective a new
difference in the reading and making of art
history, a new exotica. Leading to issues
concerning - plurality, heterogeneity, migration,
travel, transculturation, contact zones, hybridity,
de-territorialisation, re-territorialisation,
identity, nationality and nationhood - that are at
the forefront of artistic practice the world over.
As a visual language, art melts barriers and, in
the last few decades, there has been a definite
move towards the macro-spaces of globality,
bringing together artists on a plane where
individuality celebrates differences.
In
the case of diaspora, 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 bec9me in itself a universal
topic.
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 technical. 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 globalisation 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. Globalisation 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 globalizations 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
melange of practices from the disparate cultures;
the 'now' of international exchanges today in
business, politics, leisure and culture, operation
though the p6wer, speed and relative availability
of air travel and tele-technologies 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
new urban space is particularly well suited as a
starting point for understanding contemporary
India: The city is a crucially intricate
construction born out of the intersection of
diverse social, economic and cultural tempers, as
a source of multi valiantly layered experiences,
playing itself in various keys across diverse
visual regimes, the city, now occupies the mind of
the artists in various arresting poses.
The
mega cities reflect the complex relation between
globalization, local traditions and newly created
spheres of life, and they allow contemporary art
production, spiritual healing and body work, folk
art and handicrafts, cinema and pop to coexist.
Here we can see how traditional approaches are
translated into contemporary forms of expression
and how they are becoming established as widely
influential in western circles.
In
Indian cities today, the visual image - as seen on
billboards, calendars, stickers, magazines,
posters, in television broadcasts and films, in
restaurants and shops, on the road side and on the
facade of buildings on taxi's, trucks and buses -
plays a major role in the everyday of the people.
It shapes their identities and moulds their
personal and social values, thereby forging
ideological conceptions of the nation itself.
Mumbai/
Bombay, New Delhi, Bangalore and Calcutta/kolkatta
are not only among the mega- cities of the world
they also represent increasingly important
cultural intellectual centers. Here, a whole new
world of images, sounds and gestures is evolving
and gaining significance in India and abroad
alike. Bollywood, Bhangra, beat and Asian dub are
influencing global culture to an increasing
extent, a lively contemporary art and theater
scene has developed in the past decades, and India
has become home to a large number of outstanding
intellectuals and authors of- the art technology
and ancient forms of culture which meet and merge
in India.
Not
only does this new emergence in art practices give
India a new reading and making of art history, but
it also creates a bridge between the cultural
divide. A bringing in of a new trajectory, while
retaining its cultural traditions. The Indian
cultural sphere seems to be in a debate between
conservative and the liberal, the revivalist and
the progressive, the socialist and the
consumerist, the indigenist and the international.
Becoming for the artists' fraternity, a heightened
difference make their creative experiences unique.
The concept is replacing the image, and the
process is diminishing the prominence of the
product, where the questioning of the medium for
its foreign origin is less important as more
compelling questions become discussed. Art is
'now' portraying sensibilities and cultural
specificities.
Against
this backdrop of outburst and outpourings a new
trajectory is emerging by ways of ideas,
materials, processes and a breaking down of
artistic genres. Where a new ideology is shaping
and changing the landscape of contemporary art
practices of today.
Art
works cover a gamut in terms of their techniques
and material as well in their forms of expression
- from installations to digital prints to mixed
media to watercolors to relief sculpture.
Celebrating differences, the heterogeneity of
concepts and their visualization by the artists
makes dynamic references to borders crossed and
recrossed. It (borders) marks a place that is the
moment of difference becoming a source of
productive excitement.
The
artists in this exhibition are the voice of
contemporary India-the visual culture which is
encompassing the spirit of a nation which is
finding its unique voice in the global,
international world which has a cosmopolitan feel
to it. A young India that is ready to face the
dualities of Tradition-modernity, rural-urban,
literacy-illiteracy, wealth-poverty.
The
artists selected here for this exhibition suggest
and use a post modern language, a
multi-disciplinary approach, working in
photography, installation and video. Their works
work deal with issues of identity within a global
context, particularly looking at the homogenizing
effect of commodification in relation to
developing economies. The projects undertaken by
these eleven contemporary artists involve eclectic
collecting, documenting and recycling of urban
debris, looking at the mundane and the profane,
The works critique the market forces that define
the cultural and art practices of the peripheral
nations and question how our identities, within
the global set up, can be sustained via a
hybridization of our culture.
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