‘Desh Pardesh’: An exhibition about finding a home in the world
‘Desh Pardesh, At Home in the World, the Epilogue’, the last leg of a three-part exhibition looks at the idea of belonging through multimedia, AI-generated works and the queer gaze on the world
Viewing He was a Good Man, a multimedia work by artist Ranbir Kaleka, is like embarking on a journey through sound and time. The artist has created an immersive experience by projecting a single-channel video onto an earlier oil painting, titled Man Threading Needle, which showed a middle-aged man completely focused on the needle in his hand.Even though the image of the man remains fixed, you feel like the visual has transformed and evolved as the videoscapes projected on it change. In one scene, shadows engage with the figure; in another, as bridges come into view in the video, it feels like the man in the painting has traveled a hundred miles. Such works form a part of Kaleka’s micro solo, Fear of the New Dawn, on view at Stir Gallery.
As the term denotes, a micro solo features a selection of an artist’s works, focused on the exploration of a specific medium and material. Kaleka’s selection is part of a broader show, Desh Pardesh, At Home in the World, the Epilogue, and shares space with two other shows—Techne Disruptors 3.0 and Queer as Free. The former is a two-person showcase in which artists Natasha Singh and Harshit Agrawal explore AI as a tool in art making to delve into cultural and historical narratives. The idea is to highlight variation in conceptuality and materiality of AI-generated artwork, which is different from the norm. The works also look at how technology can imbibe South Asian aesthetics.
The second, Queer as Free, is a group show in which ten artists such as Daina Mohapatra, Balbir Kishan, Sawan Taank and Dr Mandakini Devi create a vision of aesthetic possibilities through a “queer feminist postcolonial gaze" centred around the Global South. “Drawing on a diverse and eclectic range of visual, installation, and performance works, the imagery of Queer As Free is culled from popular culture, epic myth, histories of orientalism, science fiction, climate change, literature and religion and visual iconographies of the sacred and the profane," states the concept note by Engendered— a transnational arts and human rights organisation—which has organised Desh Pardesh.
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The exhibitions at Stir Gallery are part of the third and final phase of this multidisciplinary exposition—the first two, Future, Past, Continuous and Go East were held at Travancore Palace and Bikaner House respectively in March. Each phase of Desh Pardesh has explored the idea of home, whichhas increasingly become a fluid one in current times with forced displacement being seen globally. Myna Mukherjee, founder, Engendered and curator of the exhibition, Desh Pardesh has looked at this notion from the lenses of migration, gender, race and memory across mediums and aesthetics. “We have brought together several projects, ranging from micro solos by artists, designers and architects to group shows, film festivals and performances," she says.
The works are creative articulations of “the self and the space" by artists from within India and from the diaspora. Overall, the three phases have featured over 55 artists from across the country and those from the subcontinent based abroad. The idea is to gauge to what extent these works can collapse the distinction of home and abroad, thereby creating a new global-local South Asian vocabulary. According to Mukherjee, each of the exhibitions have explored the literal and figurative borders that people experience including the lines between the past and the present, personal and national histories, belonging and otherness.
Desh Pardesh stems from a very personal space for Mukherjee, who was part of the diaspora for nearly 25 years. She has been privy to this insider-outsider experience. “I have seen the understanding of diaspora and home change, collapse and transform. Especially in the Indian subcontinent, the upheaval of displacement has compelled artists to re-evaluate their identities, respond constructively to the material world around them, and reflect on their emotional ties to their homelands—all while contemplating art’s role during times of crisis or conflict," she says.
On view till 10 April at Stir Gallery, Chattarpur Farms, New Delhi.
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