Seeds are Being Sown - Shaunak Mahbubani

Seeds are Being Sown

Allies for the Uncertain Futures part 3

Amitesh Grover, Anna Ehrenstein, Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai, Aqui Thami, Baaraan Ijlal, Falani, Khushbu Patel, N*A*I*L*S hacks facts fictions, Parmita Mukherjee, Pêdra Costa, Rupali Patil, Tehmeena Firdos; with texts by Sabika Abbas Naqvi, Sabina Yasmin Rahman

As part of Prameya Art Foundation's Art Scribes Award

View the exhibition online: www.shrineempiregallery.com/roomexhibition/praf-presents-seeds-are-being-sown/

Curatorial Note

All four of my grandparents were forced to flee their homes in Sindh, travelling by sea to Bombay during the partition of the sub-continent. They spent their formative years struggling to find livelihood and belonging in resettlement camps outside the city, finding scant time for healing amongst the pressures of survival. The traumas of their loss, robbed of complexity, have been passed down to us over the generations in remarks and family whispers. These colonial fault lines, further entrenched by opportunist political actors, have hardened into the walls that help build upper-caste majoritarianism today.

Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe theorises the global move towards hardening of cultural divisions through processes of “emptying vessels,” “drilling,” and “expelling organic matter,” writing, “the erection of the vertical in a privileged position is one of the concrete traces of brutalism, whether it is exercised on bodies or on materials.” This process of depletion creates isolation; one that might allow for a rational understanding of otherness, but leaves little room for a corporeal breakdown of its affect. How, then, do we create experiences of deep syncretism? Perhaps we can look to the ‘in-between’ space, built on the articulation of cultural differences that act as "necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic". Amongst communal acts of eating, praying, sharing fears, and dreaming equitable futures, I have experienced glimpses of what healing looks like. It is within these historically contoured terrains, questioning body and belonging, faith and free-will, that this exhibition is seeded.

We stand witness today, to the "deployment of force without reserve" in the concretisation of divisions through registers of citizenship and domicile law. This act is the acceleration of an on-going geo-political marginalisation whose nuances are often invisibilized by mainstream media reportage. Aqui Thami’s archive from Gorkhaland reminds us of this history, holding a particular specificity of the land, while simultaneously carrying evidence of the commonality of state repression through communication blackouts, unlawful arrests, and land occupation. Tehmeena Firdos’ small-scale sculptures speak loudly about the emotional anxieties present amongst those who are closest to violence, but also carry important markers of direction ahead such as Dr. Ambedkar’s emblematic pointing finger. Other formations of works foreground the tense relationship between the desire for audibility and dangers of voicing dissent, invoking - through absence - close encounters with punitive systems. Demanding agency, the artists around you take several leaps forward, their works and voices performing 'acts of citizenship', claiming corporeal, public, epistemological, algorithmic spaces of imagining the future. Pedra Costa, processing rooted knowledges through the orifices of the body, holds these desires together saying, “we are always collective, never individual.” Even in plurivocal collectivity this gathering is not exhaustive or complete, but better understood in the full complexity of intersections brought together by the curatorial series ‘Allies for the Uncertain Futures’. This series, of which this forms the third part, explores the possibilities of co-visioning futures through the philosophy of non-duality. The assemblage of practices seen here further develop this collective action, in reflection, collectivity, hybridity, infiltration, multiplicity, offering incipient antidotes to rigidities cemented by the powers of our times. The fight for self-determination is a long-lived one; we continue to walk and make space for more to walk alongside, to ask those left behind to lead. As Sabika Abbas Naqvi writes, “hope is labour”, in which we sow seed whose fruit we may never see.

In Commemoration
The development of this exhibition in these tumultuous times is founded on multiple intersecting motivations, primary amongst them is the urge to collectively make sense of the sprouting of femme and queer led resistances blooming synchronously over the last two years, across the world. India, too, witnessed a sustained period of protest starting December 2019 in response to changes in citizenship laws, seeing women-led protests emerge across the country. These changing laws are a significant move forward in the governing regime’s desire for a hindu-nationalist state, fervently targeting minorities and dissenting voices. In reflecting, it has been important to us that we acknowledge the long lineages in which these movements sit, and to honour those who have fought before us. Artists in this formation have created moments of bearing witness and holding space for those who have faced the greatest losses in these struggles for autonomy and self-determination. Through multiple modes of commemoration, from direct representation to senatorial experience, we consider the plural possibilities of healing a fissured world.

Tehmeena Firdos, series of six sculptures, dental plaster, watercolour on acrylic, found images, wire, 2020.

Aqui Thami, Gorkhaland Picture Library, 2020.

Aqui Thami, Ceremony to Bear Witness, 2020

Sabika Abbas, Ummeed Pe Duniya Qayam Hai (The World Revolves on Hope), lettered by Asma Bi, 2020

Acts of Audibility
India’s recent moments of resistance have generated a powerful charge rooted in organic syncretism. Gathering impetus from the model of a highway occupation in the capital, almost a hundred such sites germinated across the length and breadth of the country. These 24/7 sit-in baghs, like many sites of resistance across the world, were as much about the claim to public space, as the right for all voices to be heard. Voice is pertinent to politics—perhaps more than any other political concept— because “audibility” is the central concern of politics: which voices get heard and which not. (4) Continuing our process of collective understanding, artists examine the nuances of voice, the historic landscapes that seek to modulate it, negotiations of speaking in institutional spaces, and the adverse repercussions of being heard. Present - in absence - are the close encounters with state systems determined to stifle voices of dissent through all means possible. (4) Fred Evans. “Public Art and the Fragility of Democracy: An Essay in Political Aesthetics”, [Columbia University Press, 2019], pp 24.

Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai, Images from the Blood Book, Ink and flower dyes on fabric, 2020

Baaraan Ijlal, Change Room Archive, 2019

Rupali Patil, The Destined Lead, collage, glass marker, engraving on cutting board, 2020 (R)

Sabina Yasmin Rahman, Letter to the Mainland, 2020

Pêdra Costa, De-colon-ization VI inbodiesvisibleborders, Single Channel Video, 2020

Claims on Futurity
The series “Allies for the Uncertain Futures”, of which this is the third part, holds at its core a dynamic inquiry into the possibilities of co-visioning futures. Not all bodies have had the right to dream their futures, with this right historically reserved for white male ‘hero’ figures, proclaiming as individuals the best course for the masses. Through corporeal assertions artists claim space in civic, representational, epistemological, and algorithmic registers, demanding the right for queer-trans bodies to vision our own futures. These processes also subvert the lone individual, bringing in multiple forms of collectivity to acts of imagining. Seen together the entire assemblage of practices in the exhibition can provide an incipient antidote to the concretization of identity we are seeing in all corners, offering modes of reflectivity, collectivity, hybridity, infiltration, and multiplicity as means of defying rigidity.

Falani, Postcard from Kabul/ Where is my name?, Photographic documentation of public art interventions, 2020

Khushbu Patel, Do you smell the rain, Droplets of my saliva have gently touched the parched soil, Watercolour on paper, 2020

Anna Ehrenstein, Tupamaras Technophallus, 360 video, 2020

Parmita Mukherjee, series of six drawings, 2020

N*A*I*L*S hacks facts fictions, Collaborative publication on nailwork, art and migration, 2019

Amitesh Grover, Light Pieces, 2020