An exhibition of multimedia works by artists from India and across the globe titled ‘Nameless Here for Evermore’ at Khoj Studios invites the viewer to reflect on the collective suffering of the world.
Whether it is the riots in Punjab and Delhi in 1984, the Naxal violence in the forests of Bastar, the violence in Kashmir, the current situation in Afghanistan, or the anti-Communist purge of 1960s Indonesia, the viewer is taken on a journey to feel the suffering of the people through images, videos and stories.
One of the exhibits is by Gauri Gill a Delhi-based photographer whose work are about the 1984 riots titled ‘Jis tann lãgé soee jãné’ which is a Punjabi saying that means ‘Only she whose body is hurt, knows’. Gill says, “My show is for those of us who were not direct victims, to try and articulate the history of our city – and universe. A world without individual stories, accounts, interpretations, opinions, secrets and photographs is indeed 1984 in the Orwellian sense.”
The exhibition has been co-curated by New Zealand-based artist Leon Tan and Khoj International Artists’ Association. Curator Leon Tan says the exhibition is about how artists have found a way to work with suffering and how to channelize it into something constructive rather than wallow in it. “Artists here have tried to change people’s perceptions of a suffering in a conflict or a riot by infecting people with new and more constructive imaginations of preferable futures rather than what status quo gives us,” says Leon.
The exhibition deals with Schizoanalysis and finding solutions to problems through art with a new language for the trauma experienced so that new solutions can be found.
The show includes works by Desire Machine Collective (India), Gauri Gill (India), Joshua Oppenheimer (USA), Leon Tan and Virlani Rupini (New Zealand/Germany), Marine Hugonnier (France), Navjot Altaf (India), Sean Snyder (USA), Sonia Jabbar (India) and Wael Shawky (Egypt).
The exhibition is on till January 31 at Khoj Studios, Khirkee Extension opposite Select City Walk Mall.
