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Rummana Hussain
Bricks, mirror, gheru, terracotta
These five works by Rummana Hussain were among her first installations. Having painted figuratively to express the political throughout the 1980s, she felt the need for object-oriented art which could respond to immediate realities.
When the Babri Masjid was demolished in 1992, Hussain was living in Bombay (Mumbai), one of the cities worst affected by communal riots. As a Muslim woman, she was forced to temporarily flee her home with her family.
Emerging from this traumatic experience, the works displayed here, in which the shattered terracotta pot is a recurrent motif, were in her first solo show, ‘Fragments/Multiples’, at Bombay’s Gallery Chemould in 1994.
Hussain used the pot allegorically: the shards of terracotta resemble broken domes, destroyed homes, and the human body undone, each alluding to the violent fracturing of social unity. From these pots, everyday materials, such as gheru (a powdered red clay) and rubble, spill onto mirrors. Their reflections are interrupted, distorted, evoking a desolate landscape of ruins.*
On 6 December 1992, an organised mob of Hindu activists demolished a sixteenth-century mosque, the Babri Masjid, in Ayodhya, India. They contended that the mosque had been built upon the site of a Hindu temple that had commemorated the birthplace of the god Ram – a mosque-temple debate ongoing since the nineteenth century. The destruction of the mosque triggered riots across the Indian subcontinent, in which some thousands were killed. This communal violence had a profound impact on many members of India’s artistic community. Vivan Sundaram recalled that there was “enormous despair”, which “shook the belief system of those brought up with Nehruvian ideals of secularism. There was a crisis.” Several artists were compelled to make works in response, and some, such as Rummana Hussain and Sheela Gowda, radically re-oriented their practices. It was within this context that artists began to experiment with installation, cross-media and performance in an effort to directly address issues of secularity and to deconstruct essentialised ideas about India’s modern and pre-modern past.*
Taken from the exhibition
The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975–1998
(October 2024 — January 2025)
The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975-1998 surveys artistic production from across the Indian subcontinent during a 23-year period marked by social upheaval, economic instability and rapid urbanisation. The exhibition unfolds in a loosely chronological manner, framed by two significant national events in the history of independent India: the declaration of the Emergency in 1975, when democratic rights were suspended, and the nuclear tests of 1998, when the country relinquished its non-violent ideals to assert its place in a new global order. Some artists responded unequivocally to developments in the public arena, while others captured shared experiences and private moments. Amongst the 30 artists featured in this show some committed themselves to representational painting; others evolved personal iconographies in a variety of mediums, including employing installation in the 1990s. All of them combined social observation with individual expression and innovative forms to make work about friendship, love, desire, family, religion, violence, caste and community. This has determined the four axes that shape the exhibition: the rise of communal violence; gender and sexuality; urbanisation and shifting class structures; and a growing connection with Indigenism.
The exhibition takes its title from Sudipta Kaviraj’s essay The Imaginary Institution of India, in which he writes persuasively about the intellectual process of conceptualising the Indian nation. Artworks consider the state’s inability to abide by the progressive character of its Constitution, conceived as an instrument for radical social transformation. They also confront government failure to uphold secularism, social justice, welfare, minority rights and affirmative action in the face of a rising Hindu right wing and pro-capitalist economic agendas. They demonstrate that solidarity and protest existed, and were expressed in many registers, from the strident or intimate to the despondent or poetic, both anguished and hopeful, in the street and in the home. We witness the quiet defiance and resilience which truly defines this imaginary institution of India. In the words of B. R. Ambedkar, the Indian Constitution’s main architect, “Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy.".
[*Barbican Centre]
Taken in the Barbican
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STUDENTS' FEDERATION OF INDIA.
ALL INDIA STUDENTS' FEDERATION .
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04.03.04.
DEFEAT THE RSS-ABVP'S SINISTER GAMEPLAN I.
Friends, .
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We would like to inform the student community that a time-bound enquiry of seven days has been instituted intothe complaints against the. habitual sexual harasser Bhaskar Yadav and that the campus has been declared out ofbounds for him till the enquiry is completed. We demand that the Administration conduct the enquiry in a speedy mannerand expel Bhaskar Yadav from the university without further delay.As the RSS-BJP across the country raises the intensity of its fascistic Hindutva campaign with Vajpayee defyingthe law of the land on the Ayodhya issue and Advani planning yet another Rath Yatra, the RSS-ABVP in our campus isalso trying to break the unity of the student community by creating communal tensions. Tuesday night's incidents atNeelgiri Dhaba were a pre-planned part of this sinister design of the RSS-ABVP to vitiate the atmosphere on campus.And once again, just as in the 101n August incident, it is the JNUSU office-bearers who have been made the specifictargets. On Tuesday night, the Secretary of the ABVP's JNU unit had the audacity to make an attempt to barge intoGodavari Hostel and threaten to drag out the JNUSU Vice-President. Their attempts at provocation having beendefeated by the peaceful and democratic opposition of the students present, the ABVP is now levelingcompletely false and baseless allegations against the JNUSU Vice-President and activists of the SFI-AISF. Thestudents present at the Neelgiri Dhaba are witness to the absurdity of such allegations and the fact that it wasthe communal lumpens of the ABVP who exposed their true colours on Tuesday night by standing in defence ofa habitual sexual harasser and communal element like Bhaskar Yadav. The extremely offensive, gender-insensitive and communal pamphlet brought out by the ABVP last night in which they have threatened to "makeSFI see blood", repeat the "Holi of Haldighat" on Jhelum Lawns if plays are enacted exposing their communalpolitics and make the students who speak out against them face "nightmarish" consequences is evidenceenough of the fact that the Sangh Giroh on our campus are yet again making attempts to provoke some incidentwhich would divide the student community on communal lines. We appeal to the student community to see throughthis fascistic gameplan of the RSS-ABVP and stand in defence of the peaceful and democratic ethos of our university while giving these communal forces a fitting rebuff. We demand that the Administration take strict disciplinary actionagainst Ajit Singh and other ABVP lumpens involved in the incident of 02.03.04.It is shocking that in the context of this intensified assault by the ABVP, self-declared secular organizations likethe AI SA and the NSUI have worked to help their cause by lending their voice to the ABVP's campaign of lies and slanderagainst JNUSU office-bearers and activists of the Left. It is shameful that considerations of narrow electoral gains andsectarian concerns have precluded them from taking a clear-cut stand against the ABVP's gameplan. In the case oftheAISA there is yet another reason: the same Bhaskar Yadav who declares himself to be a " Hindu Human Bomb"used to be an AISA activist and in the 2001 JNUSU elections he could be seen shouting slogans for AISA duringt he Presidential debate and campaigning wearing an AISA badge on election day. Perhaps it was the sympathy.
arising out of this association that led to the AISA remaining completely silent on the repeated offencescommitted by Bhaskar Yadav before Tuesday. Even on that night the JNUSU General Secretary remained atotally mute spectator. While the Vice-President and other members of the JNUSU Council were pressurizing theAdministration's representatives to punish Bhaskar Yadav she did not utter a single word against him and wascompletely absent from the efforts made by the JNUSU throughout Wednesday to ensure that some action wastaken. In a step that threatens the unity of the JNUSU she even refused to sign yesterday.
's JNUSU pamphl~t on.
the issue. After such a show of crass opportunism in the real struggle against t he communal forces, calhng aprotest against communalism today is nothing but the worst form of hypocrisy on the part ofthe AISA. The NSUIhas also shown its complete bankruptcy by targeting its campaign mainly against the JNUSU Vice-President.We appeal to the student community to remain united against the communal designs of the RSS-ABVP and.
expose the opportunistic politics of the NSUI and the AISA. .
We congratulate the students of Aligarh Muslim University for their successful struggle on the issue of democratic rightsdemanding elections to the Students Union. In keeping with the JNU student community.
's long traditions of solidarity, the.
JNUSU President had joined the hunger strike being carried out by the AMU students and he was part of the team that.
negotiated with the Vice-Chancellor. Following these protests the AMU Administration has been forced to concede all thedemands of the student community. A victory procession of more than a thousand AMU students was led by the JNUSUPresident. However, it is extremely unfortunate that the JNUSU General Secretary is trying to make use of this historic.
achievement of united students' struggle for narrow self-promotion. The AISA has claimed that she participated in apublic meeting in AMU on 241h January. Then why did she wait for more than a month befor~ informing the studentcommunity of the ongoing struggle? What has been her contribution to the struggle in the course of that period?·TheAISA's silence on these question only goes to show the ridiculousness of the General Secretary's cheap attempts to gainpersonal mileage from a struggle of which she was not a part at all. .
Sd/~ .
Sd/-Jyotirmoy Bhattacharya, Nimesh Chandra,Secretary, JNU-SFI Secretary, JNU-AISF.
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Rummana Hussain
Wood, mirror, terracotta, acrylic, earth, wall-mounted pot, wooden box, acrylic box
These five works by Rummana Hussain were among her first installations. Having painted figuratively to express the political throughout the 1980s, she felt the need for object-oriented art which could respond to immediate realities.
When the Babri Masjid was demolished in 1992, Hussain was living in Bombay (Mumbai), one of the cities worst affected by communal riots. As a Muslim woman, she was forced to temporarily flee her home with her family.
Emerging from this traumatic experience, the works displayed here, in which the shattered terracotta pot is a recurrent motif, were in her first solo show, ‘Fragments/Multiples’, at Bombay’s Gallery Chemould in 1994.
Hussain used the pot allegorically: the shards of terracotta resemble broken domes, destroyed homes, and the human body undone, each alluding to the violent fracturing of social unity. From these pots, everyday materials, such as gheru (a powdered red clay) and rubble, spill onto mirrors. Their reflections are interrupted, distorted, evoking a desolate landscape of ruins.*
On 6 December 1992, an organised mob of Hindu activists demolished a sixteenth-century mosque, the Babri Masjid, in Ayodhya, India. They contended that the mosque had been built upon the site of a Hindu temple that had commemorated the birthplace of the god Ram – a mosque-temple debate ongoing since the nineteenth century. The destruction of the mosque triggered riots across the Indian subcontinent, in which some thousands were killed. This communal violence had a profound impact on many members of India’s artistic community. Vivan Sundaram recalled that there was “enormous despair”, which “shook the belief system of those brought up with Nehruvian ideals of secularism. There was a crisis.” Several artists were compelled to make works in response, and some, such as Rummana Hussain and Sheela Gowda, radically re-oriented their practices. It was within this context that artists began to experiment with installation, cross-media and performance in an effort to directly address issues of secularity and to deconstruct essentialised ideas about India’s modern and pre-modern past.*
Taken from the exhibition
The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975–1998
(October 2024 — January 2025)
The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975-1998 surveys artistic production from across the Indian subcontinent during a 23-year period marked by social upheaval, economic instability and rapid urbanisation. The exhibition unfolds in a loosely chronological manner, framed by two significant national events in the history of independent India: the declaration of the Emergency in 1975, when democratic rights were suspended, and the nuclear tests of 1998, when the country relinquished its non-violent ideals to assert its place in a new global order. Some artists responded unequivocally to developments in the public arena, while others captured shared experiences and private moments. Amongst the 30 artists featured in this show some committed themselves to representational painting; others evolved personal iconographies in a variety of mediums, including employing installation in the 1990s. All of them combined social observation with individual expression and innovative forms to make work about friendship, love, desire, family, religion, violence, caste and community. This has determined the four axes that shape the exhibition: the rise of communal violence; gender and sexuality; urbanisation and shifting class structures; and a growing connection with Indigenism.
The exhibition takes its title from Sudipta Kaviraj’s essay The Imaginary Institution of India, in which he writes persuasively about the intellectual process of conceptualising the Indian nation. Artworks consider the state’s inability to abide by the progressive character of its Constitution, conceived as an instrument for radical social transformation. They also confront government failure to uphold secularism, social justice, welfare, minority rights and affirmative action in the face of a rising Hindu right wing and pro-capitalist economic agendas. They demonstrate that solidarity and protest existed, and were expressed in many registers, from the strident or intimate to the despondent or poetic, both anguished and hopeful, in the street and in the home. We witness the quiet defiance and resilience which truly defines this imaginary institution of India. In the words of B. R. Ambedkar, the Indian Constitution’s main architect, “Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy.".
[*Barbican Centre]
Taken in the Barbican
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AKHIL BHARATIYA VIDYARTHI PARISHAD .
10/10/2003ASI, AYODHYA AND THE MARXIST LIESFriends, Yesterday's SFI pamphlet (9.1 0.03) is nothing but a bunch of lies written in flowery Englishlanguage. By hoodwinking and distorting facts and evidences the Marxist School of Thought in ~ Indian historical writings, "the intellectually defunct Marxist scholars" have survived in the borderlineof Indian Intellectual Mainstream till today. To expose the true white lies of the Marxist Goons andtheir campus "official criminal" the SFI, ABVP would like to bring in more facts about the ASIreport and the Ayodhya dispute. ABVP challenges SF! (if it is so sure about the truthfulness of its...._-----:staAd)-it shouid-come in fora open conference ofl'this iSsue witfl ABVP in near future. We shall cite_ --,~~in few more examples of the many evidences from various sources to prove our stand further..
A. Fuhrer in his "The Monumental Antiquities and Inscriptions in the North-Western.
Provinces and oudh" (Archaeological Survey of India Report, 1891, pp 296-297); "Mir Khan built amasjid in Ayodhya in A.H. 923 (1528 A.D.) during the reign of Babar which still bears his name.This old temple must have been a fine one, for many of its columns hav_e been utilised by theMusalmans in the construction of the Babars Masjid". H.R. Neville in the Barabanki DistrictGazetteer, Lucknow, 1905, pp 168-169, writes: uthe Janmasthan temple was destroyed by Babar'.Neville further states in the Fyzabad District Gazetteer, Lucknow 1905, pp 172-177: "The Janmasthan was in Ramkot and marked the birth place of Rama. In 1528 A.D., Babar came toAyodhya and halted here for a week. He destroyed the ancient temple on its site built a mosque,still known as Babar's Mosque". In Bhai Man Singh's Pathi Janam Sakhi composed in 1787 Anno.
Vikrami/1730 A.D. we do get the mention of Guru Nanak visiting Ayodhya Ram Janmasthan around.
1520's with his Muslim disciple Mardana : "Mardania I eh Ayodhia Nagari Sri Ram Chandraji JiRi, so chal, iska darsa Karile" ("Mardana" this Ayodhya citiy belongs to Shri Ramchandra Ji, so letus have its darsana). In Mrs. A. Biveridge translation of Babar-Nama published in 1926 gives theaccount by Mir Baqi4the Commander of Babur, "at the Janma Bhumi site Hindu temple were builtseveral times whenever the Mussalmans destro~ it. Finally under_the ordeLof Bab~ur this grand.
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temple was destroyed and a new masjid was built which came to be known as the JanmabhumiMasjid". Now coming over to the archaeological evidences a most significant find is a DevanagariInscription of the 1ihcentury known as the Hari-Vishnu Inscription. The inscription is comp....osedin high-flown sanskrit verse. Line 15 of this inscription, for example clearly tells us that a "beautiful temple of Vishnu-Hari built with heaps of stones .. .. . and beautified with a golden spire........
unparalleled by any other temple by earlier kings." {Evidence found by Prof. B.B. LaII and Gupta inthe 1970s}. .
Further another couplet found by the ASI recently related to "the honour of Hari-Vishnufound in the F3 trench" belies the SFI claim that no Vashnavite Evidence were found. Boththese two evidences destroys the claim of the opposite side. "The terracotta images ofthe Gods.
and Goddesses, Yakshas, Yakshis, Kirtimukhas, Puranaghattas, Double Lotus Flowers and.
the Terracotta image of the Mother Goddess (Durga) of the Kushan period" falsifies the claim.
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that the structure was Islamic from the beginning (ASI Report). The "Hari-Vishnu Inscription" asexamined by Ajay Mitra Shastri, Chairman of the Epigraphical Society of india gives thefollowing summary: ".....This wonderful temple was built in the temple city of Ayodhya situated inSaketamandala ... line 19 describes God Vishnu as destroying King Bali" (1992-93 Report of theArchaeologist Dr. 8.8. Lall and Gupta after the digging of the trench~s iiJl!!ledia~~JY, ~ttw~tl1! .
, ,;J.
demolition). "In the trench number F4 a panel of'dwara-palaka (gate-Reaper) wasdiscovered" (ASI '.
Report). .
Friends, these are few of the evidenc;:es which are worth mentioning. There are many morefrom the literary and the Archaeological sources which we shall bring it in public in future. It is timefor SFI to stop their game of white lies and not force the ABVP to open up their dirty can of worms.In our next issue we shall expose the lies of SFI in relation to GSCASH and Mahi-Mandavi..
We also greet the JNU community on the occasion of Valmlki Jayanti. -.
Vande Mataram I.
Sd/-Sd/-.
Ajit Kumar Singh Shrish Chandra.
Secretary, ABVP, JNU President, ABVP, JNU .
.
Rummana Hussain
Wood, mirror, terracotta, acrylic, earth, wall-mounted pot, wooden box, acrylic box
These five works by Rummana Hussain were among her first installations. Having painted figuratively to express the political throughout the 1980s, she felt the need for object-oriented art which could respond to immediate realities.
When the Babri Masjid was demolished in 1992, Hussain was living in Bombay (Mumbai), one of the cities worst affected by communal riots. As a Muslim woman, she was forced to temporarily flee her home with her family.
Emerging from this traumatic experience, the works displayed here, in which the shattered terracotta pot is a recurrent motif, were in her first solo show, ‘Fragments/Multiples’, at Bombay’s Gallery Chemould in 1994.
Hussain used the pot allegorically: the shards of terracotta resemble broken domes, destroyed homes, and the human body undone, each alluding to the violent fracturing of social unity. From these pots, everyday materials, such as gheru (a powdered red clay) and rubble, spill onto mirrors. Their reflections are interrupted, distorted, evoking a desolate landscape of ruins.*
On 6 December 1992, an organised mob of Hindu activists demolished a sixteenth-century mosque, the Babri Masjid, in Ayodhya, India. They contended that the mosque had been built upon the site of a Hindu temple that had commemorated the birthplace of the god Ram – a mosque-temple debate ongoing since the nineteenth century. The destruction of the mosque triggered riots across the Indian subcontinent, in which some thousands were killed. This communal violence had a profound impact on many members of India’s artistic community. Vivan Sundaram recalled that there was “enormous despair”, which “shook the belief system of those brought up with Nehruvian ideals of secularism. There was a crisis.” Several artists were compelled to make works in response, and some, such as Rummana Hussain and Sheela Gowda, radically re-oriented their practices. It was within this context that artists began to experiment with installation, cross-media and performance in an effort to directly address issues of secularity and to deconstruct essentialised ideas about India’s modern and pre-modern past.*
Taken from the exhibition
The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975–1998
(October 2024 — January 2025)
The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975-1998 surveys artistic production from across the Indian subcontinent during a 23-year period marked by social upheaval, economic instability and rapid urbanisation. The exhibition unfolds in a loosely chronological manner, framed by two significant national events in the history of independent India: the declaration of the Emergency in 1975, when democratic rights were suspended, and the nuclear tests of 1998, when the country relinquished its non-violent ideals to assert its place in a new global order. Some artists responded unequivocally to developments in the public arena, while others captured shared experiences and private moments. Amongst the 30 artists featured in this show some committed themselves to representational painting; others evolved personal iconographies in a variety of mediums, including employing installation in the 1990s. All of them combined social observation with individual expression and innovative forms to make work about friendship, love, desire, family, religion, violence, caste and community. This has determined the four axes that shape the exhibition: the rise of communal violence; gender and sexuality; urbanisation and shifting class structures; and a growing connection with Indigenism.
The exhibition takes its title from Sudipta Kaviraj’s essay The Imaginary Institution of India, in which he writes persuasively about the intellectual process of conceptualising the Indian nation. Artworks consider the state’s inability to abide by the progressive character of its Constitution, conceived as an instrument for radical social transformation. They also confront government failure to uphold secularism, social justice, welfare, minority rights and affirmative action in the face of a rising Hindu right wing and pro-capitalist economic agendas. They demonstrate that solidarity and protest existed, and were expressed in many registers, from the strident or intimate to the despondent or poetic, both anguished and hopeful, in the street and in the home. We witness the quiet defiance and resilience which truly defines this imaginary institution of India. In the words of B. R. Ambedkar, the Indian Constitution’s main architect, “Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy.".
[*Barbican Centre]
Taken in the Barbican
Rummana Hussain
Wood, paint on acrylic, gheru, terracotta
These five works by Rummana Hussain were among her first installations. Having painted figuratively to express the political throughout the 1980s, she felt the need for object-oriented art which could respond to immediate realities.
When the Babri Masjid was demolished in 1992, Hussain was living in Bombay (Mumbai), one of the cities worst affected by communal riots. As a Muslim woman, she was forced to temporarily flee her home with her family.
Emerging from this traumatic experience, the works displayed here, in which the shattered terracotta pot is a recurrent motif, were in her first solo show, ‘Fragments/Multiples’, at Bombay’s Gallery Chemould in 1994.
Hussain used the pot allegorically: the shards of terracotta resemble broken domes, destroyed homes, and the human body undone, each alluding to the violent fracturing of social unity. From these pots, everyday materials, such as gheru (a powdered red clay) and rubble, spill onto mirrors. Their reflections are interrupted, distorted, evoking a desolate landscape of ruins.*
On 6 December 1992, an organised mob of Hindu activists demolished a sixteenth-century mosque, the Babri Masjid, in Ayodhya, India. They contended that the mosque had been built upon the site of a Hindu temple that had commemorated the birthplace of the god Ram – a mosque-temple debate ongoing since the nineteenth century. The destruction of the mosque triggered riots across the Indian subcontinent, in which some thousands were killed. This communal violence had a profound impact on many members of India’s artistic community. Vivan Sundaram recalled that there was “enormous despair”, which “shook the belief system of those brought up with Nehruvian ideals of secularism. There was a crisis.” Several artists were compelled to make works in response, and some, such as Rummana Hussain and Sheela Gowda, radically re-oriented their practices. It was within this context that artists began to experiment with installation, cross-media and performance in an effort to directly address issues of secularity and to deconstruct essentialised ideas about India’s modern and pre-modern past.*
Taken from the exhibition
The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975–1998
(October 2024 — January 2025)
The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975-1998 surveys artistic production from across the Indian subcontinent during a 23-year period marked by social upheaval, economic instability and rapid urbanisation. The exhibition unfolds in a loosely chronological manner, framed by two significant national events in the history of independent India: the declaration of the Emergency in 1975, when democratic rights were suspended, and the nuclear tests of 1998, when the country relinquished its non-violent ideals to assert its place in a new global order. Some artists responded unequivocally to developments in the public arena, while others captured shared experiences and private moments. Amongst the 30 artists featured in this show some committed themselves to representational painting; others evolved personal iconographies in a variety of mediums, including employing installation in the 1990s. All of them combined social observation with individual expression and innovative forms to make work about friendship, love, desire, family, religion, violence, caste and community. This has determined the four axes that shape the exhibition: the rise of communal violence; gender and sexuality; urbanisation and shifting class structures; and a growing connection with Indigenism.
The exhibition takes its title from Sudipta Kaviraj’s essay The Imaginary Institution of India, in which he writes persuasively about the intellectual process of conceptualising the Indian nation. Artworks consider the state’s inability to abide by the progressive character of its Constitution, conceived as an instrument for radical social transformation. They also confront government failure to uphold secularism, social justice, welfare, minority rights and affirmative action in the face of a rising Hindu right wing and pro-capitalist economic agendas. They demonstrate that solidarity and protest existed, and were expressed in many registers, from the strident or intimate to the despondent or poetic, both anguished and hopeful, in the street and in the home. We witness the quiet defiance and resilience which truly defines this imaginary institution of India. In the words of B. R. Ambedkar, the Indian Constitution’s main architect, “Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy.".
[*Barbican Centre]
Taken in the Barbican
From the series Shelter, 1994–99
Vivan Sundaram
Kalamkhush handmade paper, steel, wood, water, glass, brake grease, acrylic paint, video
Vivan Sundaram transitioned from painting and drawing in the early 1990s to embrace a broader, spatially oriented approach. ‘House’ portrays his reflections on the changing political landscape and communal tensions in India at the time.
Held by a metal armature, the installation elaborates on the concept of refuge. A walled sanctuary cast in kalamkhush (paper handmade from khadi, the hand-spun, natural-fibre fabric promoted by Mahatma Gandhi during India’s anti-colonial struggle), ‘House’’s surface carries embossed emblems of the tools of labour and speaks to collective struggles against power.
Alongside a mineral hue reminiscent of coagulated blood, the outer walls exhibit marks of brutality:
scattered limbs, jagged outlines of weapons, and closed windows. Within, a pedestal bears a wide-brimmed vessel filled with water, and flickering through the transparent base of the bowl, a fiery video projection conveys an allegory of simmering injustice.*
On 6 December 1992, an organised mob of Hindu activists demolished a sixteenth-century mosque, the Babri Masjid, in Ayodhya, India. They contended that the mosque had been built upon the site of a Hindu temple that had commemorated the birthplace of the god Ram – a mosque-temple debate ongoing since the nineteenth century. The destruction of the mosque triggered riots across the Indian subcontinent, in which some thousands were killed. This communal violence had a profound impact on many members of India’s artistic community. Vivan Sundaram recalled that there was “enormous despair”, which “shook the belief system of those brought up with Nehruvian ideals of secularism. There was a crisis.” Several artists were compelled to make works in response, and some, such as Rummana Hussain and Sheela Gowda, radically re-oriented their practices. It was within this context that artists began to experiment with installation, cross-media and performance in an effort to directly address issues of secularity and to deconstruct essentialised ideas about India’s modern and pre-modern past.*
Taken from the exhibition
The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975–1998
(October 2024 — January 2025)
The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975-1998 surveys artistic production from across the Indian subcontinent during a 23-year period marked by social upheaval, economic instability and rapid urbanisation. The exhibition unfolds in a loosely chronological manner, framed by two significant national events in the history of independent India: the declaration of the Emergency in 1975, when democratic rights were suspended, and the nuclear tests of 1998, when the country relinquished its non-violent ideals to assert its place in a new global order. Some artists responded unequivocally to developments in the public arena, while others captured shared experiences and private moments. Amongst the 30 artists featured in this show some committed themselves to representational painting; others evolved personal iconographies in a variety of mediums, including employing installation in the 1990s. All of them combined social observation with individual expression and innovative forms to make work about friendship, love, desire, family, religion, violence, caste and community. This has determined the four axes that shape the exhibition: the rise of communal violence; gender and sexuality; urbanisation and shifting class structures; and a growing connection with Indigenism.
The exhibition takes its title from Sudipta Kaviraj’s essay The Imaginary Institution of India, in which he writes persuasively about the intellectual process of conceptualising the Indian nation. Artworks consider the state’s inability to abide by the progressive character of its Constitution, conceived as an instrument for radical social transformation. They also confront government failure to uphold secularism, social justice, welfare, minority rights and affirmative action in the face of a rising Hindu right wing and pro-capitalist economic agendas. They demonstrate that solidarity and protest existed, and were expressed in many registers, from the strident or intimate to the despondent or poetic, both anguished and hopeful, in the street and in the home. We witness the quiet defiance and resilience which truly defines this imaginary institution of India. In the words of B. R. Ambedkar, the Indian Constitution’s main architect, “Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy.".
[*Barbican Centre]
Taken in the Barbican
When Lord Rama came back to the city of Ayodhya after killing Ravana, the people of Ayodhya, cleaned Ayodhya and decorated with the light of lamps in the night. After that, it has become a tradition that lights are lit to reduce the darkness of Kartik Amavasya. This festival has celebrated for five days from Dhanteras to Bhai Dooj.
Know In Detail: awamkiawaz.in/festival-diwali-know-history-decoration-dis...
#HappyDiwali #DeepawaliCelebration #Firecrackers #Decorations #Diwali2020 #AwamKiAwaz