De-notified Land
Title: De-notified Land (2019)
A solo show; 14th March to 4th May;
Special thanks to Abhilasha Shrivastava (environmental science researcher, working as Tiger project researcher with WII, Dehradun) for her contribution in researching on all different aspect of the Land question; Sneha Raghavan (Researcher, Archivist) for her central writeup for the show and Atika Singh (poet) for her literary contribution to one of my diary work, where through her poetry she responds to my images.
Site: Project 88, Colaba, Mumbai, India.
Dimension: Variable.
Media: Painted banners, posters and festoon by black pigment bind with distemper and red-oxide on handwoven and rough cotton cloth, painted illustrations by gouache on rice-paper, pen and ink drawings on fragile printed world-maps, handwritten text on the wall, ledger cutting text on fibreglass, watercolour Painting on paper displayed on the floor covered by glass, Chinese ink drawing on uncut handmade paper, drawings by black pigment on paper pasted on cotton cloth oil painting on canvas and vintage frame, wooden texts and 4-Diaries.
Description:
My inquiry is premised on the belief that every subject is built upon contradictions that multiply and form social discourse, and my attempt is to identify such contradictions in order to dismantle hegemonic discourse. Therefore, my practice is not limited to image-making alone, but the juxtaposition of different materials that are specific to the subject, and even that which can be said as an anti-referential or illegal witness. Through such engagements in varied locations and contexts, I have been confronted by the impossibility of representation. And I perceive this phenomenon as excessive. However, in this work, I purely concentrate on image-making.
The land has been a matter of contention from the very time it was understood as property/ resource which is to be materially exploited. My concerns for quite some time now have been in understanding the question of land in its contemporary representations. Notified and De-notified, both are self-contradictory in real implementation. It has its own multi-utility according to the will of the law. In this exhibition, I unfold this discourse by recomposing different contradictions and consequences in relation to the context of De-notified land. The question of land has time and again remained in the political and all other allied discourses, however, it’s whitewashed or hidden under the simulated carpets of spectacular imageries. Since the fundamental relations are based on systematic and maximum exploitation and appropriation of public resources by a privileged few, every or any entry to the question of resources is a matter of serious political, cultural and economic debates.
My attempt in these series has been to investigate how the natural resource has been marked by the greed to exploit and destroy. My attempts though aren’t based in the discourse of the privileged liberals and rather a critique of these very same positions. De-notified Land is an exhibition that recomposes three years of observation and identification of contradictions that are attached to the land discourse. The vast landscapes we are part of and the dilemma of how we deal with it now. To see it close and from a distance, the vast and open landscapes are simultaneous, the overpowering and disturbing ones are at the forefront. I make a critique of the undeniable, of the overpowering present, that which doesn’t allow us to enjoy the vastness of the landscape and the picturesque plane. My critique is about the question of land in general, but this generality takes its form from specific instances of localized struggles and conflicts. The specific and the real landscapes are references for the fundamental broad question.
