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Blind Spots is a contemporary take on the socio-political barriers that divide the world, by Reena Saini Kallat.
“I think through Blind Spots I’m exploring the space of the missing fragment/omission of data/no cognition where we seem to have lost sight of some of our core values and aspirations common to both sides. Through the works in the exhibition my attempt is for us to seek the many commonalities amidst difference or the many bonds beyond the borders.”
- Reena Saini Kallat
This show embodies five diverse artworks critically analyzing the geo-political divisions globally. Reena’s artistic oeuvre span across diverse mediums such as drawing, photography, sculpture and video engaging diverse materials imbued with conceptual underpinnings, questioning ideas of borders, geography, landscape, identity, memory, history and the natural world.
1. Leaking Lines
“Leaking Lines, in which we may discern an acknowledgement of Zarina Hashmi’s decades-long meditation on the wounds inflicted by such arbitrarily drawn borders as the Radcliffe Line, focuses on the imposition of territorial boundaries that define nations, states, unequal trucial arrangements, buffer zones or unstable ceasefire scenarios.”
- Ranjit Hoskote
Conceived as diptychs, one part rendered in charcoal reveals the factual landscape, while
the other formed by a flayed fence using electric wires forms rich cartographic abstractions that invoke as a woven undulating terrain.
The electric cables morph into the barbed wires and fences, holding inherent contradictions of the barriers that form a language that connects us to the international tensions rising due to territorial borders.
"Leaking Lines" urges the viewers to think and begs the question, “Have we reached that point that these divided nation states have become more of a hurdle rather than a means of defining who you are?” … because this fractured geography earlier absorbed unconsciously in a sense, has now sundered and totally split nations’ diverse cultures.
2. Chorus I & Chorus II
These two sculptures are modeled on pre radar acoustic devices that were built during the World War to trap the sounds of enemy aircraft. Trying to subvert the notions of war, Kallat has incorporated the birds’ sounds. There is the Cuckoo bird from Israel singing to the Palestinian Sun bird & the Crested Caracara from Mexico calling out to the Eagle from the States. The diverse range of birds calling reminds us how muted we are towards these distant signals from the natural world, which makes us so disconnected from nature. The artist urges us to tune into these calm signals and think about humanity as a whole breaking through the artificial boundaries & borders created by mankind.
3. Blind Spots
Blind Spots, a term in medical literature refers to how the brain bridges the gaps produced due to the lack of capacity of the optic nerve to process complete data.
Through the optics of viewing & a play on legibility, Kallat deploys preambles of the constitutions of nations that are either in a state of conflict or already partitioned. By posing a ‘test of vision’, each side of the screen displayed are all the shared values & principles of both constitutions fragmented into individual alphabets morphed into braille like dots. This metaphorically represents the loss of sight of our common aspirations & objectives such as freedom, democracy, justice, and equality.
“One is transported to three different spaces: clinical space, the world of the lavatory represented by the plunger & finally the elevated constitution. This fusion of three extremely unrelated spaces cutting into each other, sort of represents the process of contamination that emerges from underneath the shadows of the inverted marks.”
- Abhay Sardesai
4. Cleft
This large work on paper represents metamorphosis & hybrid where animals & birds come together to form a complex world of conjoined species It is a determined & desperate effort to reset a divided planet apportioned by mankind. Thus, this invites viewers to think of the many bonds and borders that make our complex existence.
5. Shifting Eco-Tone
Rivers are beds of civilizations. The invisible hands of rivers such as Ravi & Sutlej meeting into India while Jhelum, Chenab & Indus flowing into Pakistan, rendering disputes, over territories of land or water resources, useless.
Shifting Eco- Tones alludes to the transitional space between biomes where biodiversity proliferates or wherein two communities might meet and integrate.
This body of artworks draws our attention towards the natural world, the human intervention in it & the missing fragment within it, leaving us with an end question that...
" Does nature or its diverse constituents need to be victimized by mankind's endless disputes to claim sovereignty over it's territories?"
On display until 28th December, 2019
Image Courtesy © Reena Saini Kallat, Chemould Prescott Road