Gallery Dotwalk and Dotwalk Ajitara Art Residency recently hosted an Indo-Swiss Art Residency Programme, “Of Barriers and Distance”, curated by Parvez, supported by the Embassy of Switzerland under the initiative SwitzerlandIndia75. The exhibition, which runs till 03 September 2024, brings together Indian and Swiss artists to reflect on the theme of “Of Barriers and Distance”. The programme encompassed a two-week-long residency, a talk and an exhibition at Gallery Dotwalk.
The residency project encompasses an intense two-week residency that brings together five Swiss and five Indian artists to reflect upon the theme of ‘Barriers and Distances’ and its meaning in today’s world through their own works and art practice. The project is led by Parvez, an artist and curator of Indian origin, currently based in Switzerland. The project thus offers a humble ground to forge connections between the resident artists, not only across two continents and their cultures but also across different regions within the subcontinent. It hopes to trigger possibilities for further exploration in the future. It also looks at content production from a socio-cultural perspective and puts the discourse in public.
The residency programme will run with the exhibition Of Barriers and Distance and a panel discussion at Gallery Dotwalk. The discussants are Prof. Brahma Prakash and Prof. Santosh Sadanand and participating artists Copa & Sordes, Richa Arya, Mimi von Moos, Birender Yadav Muda Mathis and Sus Zwick.
“If the essence of life is to explore and make sense of the time-space matrix it exists in, then Distances and Barriers can not be excluded. And, art practitioners can not live in a vacuum. The Panel Discussion / Talks ‘Of Barriers and Distances’ opens up numerous ways to experience, feel and understand the space we live, move in, engage with and react to continuously because it is what we live in. Two acclaimed guest speakers and five artists from India and Switzerland share their thoughts through interactive”, said Parvez, the show’s curator.
‘Of Barriers and Distances’
The world is often described as a ‘global village’. While that may lend a sense of togetherness and shortening of distances, the variety of barriers and obstructions we live with today is mind-boggling. The walls, fences, gated housing societies, and the heavily guarded, military-controlled borders surround us to make us wary of the ‘other.’ These physical manifestations merely point to the deep-seated fears and insecurities that civilizations continue to hold on to and sell, even when we know that the visible, physical barriers, even the most sophisticated ones, remain penetrable. However, the obstacles that serve as the foundation for the physical ones remain primarily invisible, unseen, and unexplored. How does one dive into these underlying psychological barriers and the processes within a mind?
In a short story, ‘Wenn die Haifische Menschen wären’ (‘If Sharks were Men’), Bertolt Brecht conjures up the analogy of Sharks as the owners of the ocean and having their communities of ‘little fishes.’ He then refers to the language differences among these fishes. “Little fish, they (sharks) would announce, are well known to be mute, but they are silent in quite different languages and hence find it impossible to understand one another.” He thus draws us first to the barriers created by language (spoken or otherwise) as well as by silence (the inarticulate-able) and then goes on to talk about the wars between the sharks, where the little fishes fight each other so the sharks could carry on with their kingdoms and domains.
In such an ocean, how much would a little fish need to swim, and for how long before it crosses the barriers the sharks conjure up for them – the barriers that divide the little fishes with their imaginary arbitrariness?
Zillions of deep-seated, invisible barriers assault the inhabitants of this global village at every step. Everything – from language to art, culture, food, religion, socio-economic strata, sexuality, gender, caste, colour, race, etc. etc., props up as a barrier as one wades through daily routines in an ever more bewildering world with its post-truth politics.
Feature image: Symbiotic Kiss_Amjum Rizve_Beads on Canvas
