Over the last six months, I had been traveling with Riyas and putting together the team of young artists from the different regions. The project involved two advisors - Amrith Lal, who is a senior editor of Indian Express and Dr. C S Venkiteshwaran, an award winning writer and film critic who helped frame the entire project within the regional politics of the Indian Subcontinent. Each of the advisors travelled with Riyas to one or two countries in order to understand the cultural tectonics through field research. I accompanied Riyas to Dhaka (Bangladesh) and Kathmandu (Nepal) and got a sense of the region of South Asia and the state of its cultural infrastructure. The travel gave me a completely new perspective of India as the superpower within the region, as opposed to what you imagine of it from the West. It also opened me up to the relationship of India with its neighbours more closely. We are often consumed only by the India-Pakistan political tension, however, there is much to be discussed with India's relationship with countries of Nepal, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Srilanka.
I spent the last month putting up the second edition of the Young Subcontinent project for the Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa. This year, we selected 21 artists from the six countries: India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Srilanka and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, Pakistan had to be left out due to the political tensions between the two countries. However, in future, we do wish to include not only Pakistan, but also countries like Myanmar, Portugal, and other countries with whom India has shared historical and cultural links.
Communication was the most challenging aspect of the overall project. Firstly, the artists came from different countries of South Asia, speaking different languages. The non-confirmity of English on one hand, and the regional absorption of the foreign language produced a new dynamic of interactions where one needed to build patience towards understanding each other. I was perpetually conscious about the hegemony of English and the ironical way in which it still bound us together. (We may wonder if colonisation that once separated us on regional lines comes to bring us together today). Secondly, several artists came from regions with limited connectivity, with whom, communication could be established only intermittently. Lastly, what added to it all was the different schedules of each artist, who were all traveling to places for their own works. With different platforms of communication, different languages and their shades and lastly their incongruous and multivalent translation in English simultaneously brought us closer and repelled us apart.
Often, dealing with different temperaments and cultures becomes tricky since you can never understand or know the extents of being polite or rude. How does one gauge the amount by which one can be within the limits of being offensive? When does one break one's temper? How does one draw moral and ethical boundaries? To some extent, my teaching background helped, but being a teacher was the last thing I expected while on ground. My concern, however, was to enable all the artists (despite their language hurdles) access to as much parts of the festival as I could. I may have certainly failed in much parts, since one can not lend as much patience to every individual given the numerous crisis that emerge on site during all hours. Curation, as I understand by now, is an artful administration of people and space in a manner that things fall just in place for every one involved. One needs to take note of the scale of operations and expand the team judiciously. As much as one thinks of it to be an intellectual process, it all boils down to executing those stories in space in a manner that everyone, almost everyone involved is happy in the end. The curator literally, through the act of story telling, manages people and space.
I have come to learn how many ideas change shape as they touch ground. Such changes happen when real objects arrive in a given space and begin their dialogue with the place they inhabit and create an environment with the material around them. Our exhibition planning often doesnt give a clear picture on the computer screen. A lot of softer, invisible and subversive stories are hidden in the strategies and politics of display. A conscious viewer will be able to decipher them, and many more connections embedded in these unsaid and inexplicit decisions made by the curatorial team. I am however, sure, that established art institutions may not leave any exhibit/display decisions to site conditions, or do they? There is some surprise and excitement in working with space as material, and ways in which it prompts to talk to the objects of display. Some resonances occur, others create oblique manners to think of showing works. Spatial conditions often fold in new stories and reveal to us the artwork in novel ways. Since most artists selected for Young Subcontinent at SAF didnot have an opportunity to visit the site beforehand, the contents, anxieties and tensions kept on. The site was new, and wasn't available even to the curators until they arrived! Thus, the exhibit was a productive negotiation over the five days before the festival.
All in all, it was a successful show. It opened up several avenues for the selected artists and created a new geography of the subcontinent - that of friendships and new networks and openings. It allowed artists from the subcontinent to understand each others' cultures and forge new associations. Artists from the last edition of Young Subcontinent have already begun to plan newer programs and visits. It is quite fulfilling to see so many of them draw confidence in each other. For many of these young artists, coming to Goa is their first international visit, and the exposure of the city, navigating a new geography and culture offers them a lot for their future. I often let them to negotiate their difficulties and crisis; their freedoms and limitations - for it allows them to find their own selves.
There are several other aspects of the exhibition that I will include over a longer essay that I shall spend time writing for Serendipity over the next few days. I will update this space with more pictures soon.
