There's room, enough room for change, always...
Because, existing paradigms shift, like the seasons just as it was winter a few days back and yet, it seems we have entered the middle of spring now.
Both John Keats and T S Elliot had something to say on this. But we are going to quote none of them. Precisely because that's passé. What's new is how the new age thinks it interprets the contemporary with a clear sense of history. At times, one wonders if that interpretation, though at times disturbingly impassionate, is more honest than what we have inherited.
Impassion, actually is an art. And standing face to face with impassion brings a kind of anxiousness within us. An anxiousness that forces us into a vortex of realization which, once accepted, makes us light. Were the feelings you went through as you stood before the canvases of Ashoke Mullick at Aakriti's exhibition that started on Feb 17.
Perhaps yes, perhaps not. Because feelings and their expressions are always personal. But then, dear friend, that's the irony of holding an exhibition at a gallery. Consider these: Hadn't the paintings originally taken shape in a quiet studio, over warm lonely nights, where the only company the artist had kept was his creative self? Isn't it therefore an expression of his personal space? Yet in concurrence, when those very paintings burst open under the arclights of a gallery, isn't that phenomenon an invasion of the personal sphere into the public space?
That's the irony of an exhibition in a gallery. Perhaps the only existing example in the contemporary socio-cultural structure, where the accepted social matrix of the public sphereblogs, news channels, parties, facebook, gmail, yahoo, google, cellphone, all the devices that shape, direct and finally condition our private spheres, daily, is twisted inside out with a quiet force.
And that consideration brings us to the next point the happenings at Aakriti in February. 17th of the month was a huge day where personal spaces took over the public domain.
Five magazines were relesead at Aakriti, 'Lightness of Being Anxious'an exhibition of paintings by Ashoke Mullick was started, and a 90 minute film'Waltz with Bashir', directed by Ari Folman was screened on the 18th.
The magazine's, third issue of 'Art Etc'dealing with the theme of migration and displacement, voluntary and forced, within and outside the precincts of the 'homeland', edited by Amit Mukhopadhyay (released by Dr Reimer Volker, Director, Goethe-Institut/ Max Mueller Bhavan, Kolkata), 'Depart”, a magazine aimed at exploring the trajectories of Bangladeshi 'cultural' scene, and edited by Ebadur Rahman (released by Ganesh Haloi), 'Gallerie'Checkpoint Palestine, edited by Bina Sarkar Ellias (released by Jogen Chowdhury), 'Art Journal' the special issue on the occasion of the 118th All India Annual Art Exhibition, edited by Rajendra (released by Lalu Prasad Shaw), were introduced. Your friendly art-update mag, 'Art-News and Views' was also introduced by the guest editor of our February issue, artist Chhatrapati Dutta.
This was followed by a panel discussion on Sources of Departure, Sites of No-return, where the editors of each of the magazines in question participated, along with Dr Paula Banerjee, the Honourary Senior Researcher at Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group and moderated by artist, art-historian and curator, Sharmishtha Ray.
As you see dear friend, at Aakriti, we have been relentlessly trying to define the personal space within the public sphere all through February. And as this new issue of 'Art-News and Views' reaches you, we urge you, why don't you to join the crusade?
After all, it is just not a question of individuality. It is the issue of the collectivity of the personal, a diversification of the generalization of being, a unique socio-cultural phenomenon. That's what time demands now
Happy reading…
