A MILLION MUTINIES LATER: INDIA AT 70

CO- CURATOR, CARDIFF, WALES 2017

COLLABORATION WITH NAZAR FOUNDATION AND FFOTOGALLERY

At a time of rapid global change and unpredictability, India emerges as a nation that has been on the threshold almost constantly since independence. Change has endured as the persistent state especially in the last three decades, with economic liberalisation making way for a barrage of reforms and revolts, spurred on by the massive shifts brought on by the coming of information technology, urbanisation, and a renewed sense of nationalism. India presents itself as a complex study of constant upheavals and internal struggles, many under the radar but some significant paradigm shifters. The contemporary moment in the country is thus perhaps best understood as an unending state of liminality, of a nation on the threshold, of a million small munities that give away to a million more. 

Instead of asking Where is the revolution? we ask Did the revolution really happen? The exhibition positions itself in this state of transition and flux that is India today, looking at new vocabularies to engage in a discourse about what makes for large socio-political transformations. Where does the everyday and the individual figure in the larger picture? Looking at these liminal spaces, processes, and moments allows us to look beyond institutional and discursive premises to happenings on the ground, of and by the people. It also becomes the moment to look at artistic processes and agencies which have, in the past and at present, lent themselves to documenting, debating, and provoking transformation. 
The artists in the show use lens-based art, archival and crowd sourced material as they investigate the everyday revolutions that are slowly and steadily transforming the social, cultural and political fabric of the nation. The investigation also shifts its focus to the equally present and significant other, i.e. the imagined India, which has evolved and transformed itself in the public sphere and the minds of Indians. This is the space where myths and aspirations collide, provoking exciting new ways of imagining the future. 
The exhibition is installed in two sites – The Angel (opposite the Cardiff Castle) focuses largely on practices that document and dialogue with issues of marginalization, displacement, sustained sites of violence, people’s movements and the politics of public spaces. The other venue is the Turner House (in Penarth) where the exhibits takes a more introspective turn, experimenting with modes of documentation and engagement with the popular (lives, imagination and memory), migration, development, memory and residue, and the inherent tensions in our imagination of contemporary India.

Using Format