Title: I can only imagine another wall (2020)

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(A display for MA first semester CRIT at De Montfort University)

 

Special thanks to Kishan Anand (Rap musician, cultural event organisers, based in the UK) and Vimal Patel (Historian, Professor De Montfort University, Leicester, UK) for helping me to research on Black History, South-Asian Diaspora community and immigration politics in the UK and Keith Barretto, who helps me for display. 

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Site: De Montfort University, Leicester.

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Dimensions: Variable.

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Media: Four Chinese ink drawings on rice paper, one Chinese ink drawing with reflective tape on acid-free hot-press paper; with written texts and googly eye, three etching prints and zinc etching plate of the same prints, six diaries with written texts and sketches by ball pen, pencil, marker, ink and collage; Wall text by reflective tape and other texts by graphite, ink, marker; 11 printed posters on Recent protests in India against different Citizen identity proof bills, which is structurally intentionally against minorities and poor peoples and immigrants, like in UK ‘Brexit’; two printed cultural journal called “Locust Review” and “Anerki”; reflective and masking tape; normal room-light (intentionally used available room light, not to focus on any specific work, want flatness or equal distribution, so no specific vocal point).

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Description: 

 

In the my1st-semester display, I have exhibited some of the ongoing thoughts in contradiction/relation with my earlier practice as a maker of propaganda art. I portrayed it in a form of notes rather than a statement of different observations and strive critically to look from both subjective and objective positionalities. As a propaganda maker, an inherent question I continually ask myself is ‘which side am I on?’. So here I have tried to imagine a propagandist without a predicted opponent, therefore, writing slogans becomes challenging. I seek to explore the blurred line or complex relation between oppressed and oppressor. More precisely, making ‘propaganda’ or ‘political art’ against the oppressive system in an institutional space tends to seem like the problem lies outside of that space and the viewers and makers position become exterior. Here it seems that we are beyond the socio-economic inequality, therefore, it can be easily dismissed as someone else’s problem. To confront such an easily dismissive attitude, here I have tried to create an uncomfortable tension by using ‘I’ as a subject of an immediately following verb. 

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As a practitioner of visual communication/propaganda, here my attempt is to find a way to dismantle the hegemonic discourses in contemporary representational politics. The set of notes and sketches on the display wall are an attempt to dismantle the very idea of ‘the privileged ‘I’. Here I have tried to look at the ‘I’ as a complex and changing subject and want to explore how the viewer reads/interprets the statement of ‘I’? E.g. “I Am Racist”, "I am Not Black", " I am mechanical reproduction", " I came from Coloniser's Country... What are the contradictions evoked, when viewers read it? Who is this ‘I’ in all the visual and written notes; is it the maker, the viewer or the personified figure in the image?

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Using recent posters against NPR (National Population Register), CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act), NRC (National Register of Citizen), Personal Data Protection Bill, I intend to create urgency. Such bills are specific to India, but its intentions are globally connected with other law on immigration (like Brexit- UK, New Asylum Act-Switzerland). If we see American, European prisons-Detention Camps-Asylums then we can understand new Capitalist-states the main agenda is to develop a new form to legalized Slavery or accessing Free Labour. Also, including such posters, printed journals in one hand and Personal diaries on the other allow me to connect with my day to day engagement and get out of any binary positionality in propaganda making.