Neither Paradise nor inferno, the Valley speaks for itself

Ordinary people in Kashmir find themselves sandwiched between opposing forces, demonstrates a performance by students

Kashmir University fine arts students staging a performance at the Students Biennale at Aspinwall House, Fort Kochi, on Friday evening.

The famed Kashmiri shawl these days is sequined with gun pellets, reflective of life fraught with danger in the valley, suggests the art work done by a fine arts student at the Jamia Millia Islamia University.

A sense of foreboding grips you as you drape it around.

The work, on display at the Students Biennale (SB) running parallel to the main Kochi-Muziris Biennale, was put to use by fine arts students of the Kashmir University, also taking part in SB, at a performance at Aspinwall House on Friday evening.

The region - often portrayed in black and white - is neither the paradise, with nature’s bounty, nor a den of violent militants, but one where ordinary people find themselves sandwiched between opposing forces; their irreparable losses and untold miseries of daily existence going largely unnoticed, demonstrates the performance put up by the students.

The performance, based on their work made using material brought from their daily life back in the Valley, and comprising newspaper cuttings and graphic narratives in most part, pointed to the summer of 2016 when the region suddenly fell into an abyss following unrest and the imposition of long spells of curfew. In fact, it wasn’t easy for the students to put their work together. After the curator of their show, Aryakrishnan – one of the SB curators – met them in the valley in May-end, they could not communicate as the valley plunged into chaos. The situation improved a little in the month preceding the Biennale, which made it possible for them, 10 students and a member of the faculty, to travel to Kochi for the Biennale. Their work is on display at Kottachery Brothers and Co in Mattancherry.

Poetry session

The performance on Friday comprised an unnerving session of poetry recital in which they made the spectators attempt to read poems from Kashmir using paper eyeglass riddled with holes. “It was tough to read the poems using those ‘spectacles’ and the effort conveyed how tough it is to try to understand their plight,” said Mr. Aryakrishnan.

This is precisely what’s lost between the romantic and victimisation narratives of Kashmir.

They also wanted to drive home the point that there’s a bit of untranslatability of experience between cultures. Language is often inadequate to convey their emotional trauma, but you could still feel the raw edges, he said.

The students burnt Kashmir chilly, its aromatic smoke troubling people, though a lot less asphyxiating than the rampantly used teargas. A student was draped from head to toe with broadsheets of the Greater Kashmir daily painted white on which they wrote.

The well-received performance raised a few heckles, as members of the far right Vishwa Hindu Parishad made enquiries on Friday night and Saturday morning if there was anything anti-national about the art performance.