Young Subcontinent Project

It has been a fantastic experience for me to go through the works of all the artists of the YS project and also to listen to their own account of their artistic vision, evolution and challenges. So, let me congratulate them all for their courage, commitment and dedication, without which they would not have reached here.. Courage, because most of them are living in very violent and conflict-ridden conditions and working within severe limitations, political, material, financial and social. So, a big salute to their indomitable courage and commitment to art.

Obviously, Riyas Komu’s curatorial vision shows through the show, where there is a specific emphasis on art and also craft in its most profound sense, rootedness and political vision. Hence one can see certain commonalities that link all these artists and their works together; their shared histories, narrative traditions, storytelling modes, spiritual and cultural resources they draw upon etc . Strikingly similar are the patterns of political and ethnic conflicts our nations are mired in, as are the flux and churn triggered by forces of global capital and the serialization of culture it propagates and imposes; the ways in which these forces impact upon our political, economic and cultural ethos and the dilemmas it create at the local, regional and national levels are also equally conflictual and problematic. Obviously, our roots, our presents and as well as our predicaments are intricately and inextricably tangled.

But what these works show is a certain pattern in these tangles – as to how it remains a source of energy and inspiration, how heavily and depressingly such traditions of together are being threatened, and also the possibilities that art opens up or its vital relevance of art as the last refuge to reclaim humanity.

From these works and the discussions that followed, I think one can look at it at three different levels: that of the roots, the earth and the sky..

The roots, its entanglements and patterns reveal the commonalities regarding our sources of inspiration, our ways of imagining and imaging stories, the strategies of sharing and stimulating each other without losing one’s own identity, etc

But above the roots, at the level of the earth, things seem to fall apart. The surface of the earth is being flattened out, boundaries are drawn on it, territories are marked, and the life above is forced to confine their visions within those cages, that are created and maintained to serve myopic visions and vested interests, political, religious and economic.

But what about the sky? That is where the hope lies and all these works reclaim and reaffirm its relevance and possibilities – they take upon themselves the responsibility of imagining new futures, of probing at more humane ways of being together, pleading to us that difference is not necessarily oppositional

So, change is about the roots, the soil and the sky; about past, present and future, it is about memories about roots, action in the present and imagination about more humane futures. So, it is about histories of the past, politics of and in the present and art of and for our common future. None of these are mutually exclusive or compartmental, they often bleed into each other, and overlap boundaries. They are also not monolithic or integral. There were and are conflicts and contradictions within and between. Only social action that transcends all kinds of boundaries and is fired by artistic imagination can heal, appeal to, and maybe change our world.

- Dr. C S Venkiteshwaran