Academy of Fine Arts, Kolkata, Jan 2019

Home and Away

I present this exhibit as a woman of Indian origin, living in Australia. Even as I write this deceptively honest declaration, I am aware of the possibilities this statement holds as a means of reinforcing the dichotomy of “us” and “them”. Nevertheless, without being discouraged by the contingency of augmenting the very phenomena I am attempting to analyse (and possibly resist), I try to categorise the trajectories of the narrative representation of the “cultural other”. To achieve that I position myself as the “cultural other”.

My endeavours to examine cultural experiences through my art practice in recent years have revealed the multiple layers of complexity that one has to negotiate in order to establish an authentic identity and sense of home in a diaspora. My research path evolves and moves in between personal experiences and political judgements where I test the reality and presence of the “cultural other”. A series of contemporary art projects provide me the critical distance that is necessary to negotiate issues of multilayered cultural encounters that often question the difference between space and place.

I question how contemporary art can challenge the complexities of spaces in between: displacement and finding home, memory paving a way for rediscovery, and the legitimacy of reconstruction. All of this unpacks the attempt to establish an authentic identity of the “cultural other” in the context of a diaspora. In order to systematically unpack the symbiotic nature of the apparently contradictory terms like displacement/home, memory/rediscovery and legitimacy/reconstruction I will first need to contextualize, qualify and position the usage of these terms.

Here, my personal experience comes into consideration. I like to describe myself as a twice uprooted Indian in search of a new home in the suburbs of Melbourne. In this project, I therefore position this research through the lens of an immigrant, “displaced” from her country of origin and finding a new “home”. She is going through a process of “rediscovery” of her existence through cultural experiences provoked by her “memory”. But in every step, she questions the “legitimacy” of her “reconstruction” and whether it translates as an authentic sense of identity

However, I should possibly question the purpose of establishing an identity to the ‘cultural other’? Does she want to belong and not feel different? Or will the establishment of an authentic identity prove the platitude of fitting in. Professor of Sociology, Avtar Brah (2010) comments on the uncertainties of ‘belonging’ and suggests that constructing alternate subject positions is a challenging task and requires a conscious effort on the part of those that identify with movements across time, space and place. If I assume that in this equation time is constant, space and place suddenly play pivotal roles in the establishing an identity for the ‘cultural other’. It is this juxtaposition of space and place that fuels the idea of Home and Away.

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