“Desperate times call for desperate measures.” This seems very apt for the nature of art and cultural practices produced that are a reflection of the times we collectively inhabit, and especially so in times of crises, where critical voices and expressions are constantly subjected to censorship and to the moral norms based on a majoritarian imposition.Under such prevailing situations, there is a demand for a particular kind of sensitivity from creative minds and there is a call for redefining the role of the citizen-artist.The citizen-artist plays a crucial role in questioning socio-cultural impositions and the orthodoxy of prevailing morals and ethics. This questioning involves the participation of cultural practitioners and the interventionist strategies they adopt to be responsive and their intentions to produce discourse(s) that are meaningful, premised on research and experimentation and do not shy away from criticality.The city of Kolkata recently witnessed one such curatorial and artistic intervention, organised by the Beyond the Edge Foundation.The city, once known for its critical edge and its particularly radical art and cultural sensibilities, has lost itself to decorative and ornamental aesthetics dictated by the Durga Puja festivities. Needless to say, for years now, it has been the Durga Puja that employs the majority of the artistic workforce in the city, which is invested in the cultural capital the festival generates.Given the place that Durga Puja presently occupies as reflected in the cultural economy of the city, the art institutions within the city over the years seem to have blindly adopted it as their syllabus, in return pushing aesthetic concerns and the changing nature of art practices – let alone criticality and self-reflection – to the margins of aesthetic production.The curatorial intervention, titled ‘Erasures and Resistances’ and brought together by Oindrilla Maity Surai, was an attempt to move beyond this obsolete production of aesthetics and re-introduce larger and pressing political and aesthetic concerns relevant to the country today.Sonia Mehra Chawla’s installation at Erasures and Resistances. Photo: Beyond the Edge.According to Surai, “… in a form of what might be called a precursor to a biennale, in terms of [the] production of meaning and knowledge and encouragement of research and experimentation, ‘Erasures and Resistances’ showcased the work of sixteen artists from all across the country, resonating a constitutive pluralism and pulsating with a polyphonic tone.”Prasanta Das, the director of Beyond the Edge, was extremely resolute in following the biennale model, stretching his efforts beyond the limit in order to make things fall into place.Vinayak Bhattacharya’s installation. Photo: Beyond the Edge.Another important person in the team, Avijit Das, the coordinator for the event, dreamed of finding a voice for the much-overshadowed edge of the city, which was a destination for refugees after partition, something that is deeply rooted in history.A robust team of enthusiastic production assistants that included Dipanjan Dey, Subham Chakraborty, Sarthak Banerjee, Biswa Swaraj Mallick, Anirban Ganguli and Palzor Namgyal Bhutia deserves a special mention.Members of the Pinjari Artists’ Union interacting with people at the event. Photo: Beyond the Edge.The venue of the event played a significant role in situating the various artistic projects and led to insightful discussions specific to the site. The Putiary Brajamohan Tewary Institution, a municipal school that offers education in both English and Bangla, was the primary venue for the four-day-long event.The institution is situated at the southern edge of Kolkata city in the South 24 Parganas’ Thakurpukur-Haridevpur area, which is on the banks of the Adi Ganga and the Tolly’s Canal that stretches to the Bay of Bengal.A view of Ram Rahman’s artwork. Photo: Beyond the Edge.The event witnessed the participation of filmmaker and academic Madhuja Mukherjee; visual artists Vinayak Bhattacharya, Aishwarya Das, Saikat Surai, Sonia Mehra Chawla, the Panjeri Artists’ Union and Ram Rahman; and performance artist Inder Salim amongst others, offering an array of experimental art and cultural practices.Pushpamala N., an artist from Bengaluru, performed her work, Gauri Lankesh’s Urgent Saaru, at the school’s auditorium.The artist cites Abanindranath Tagore’s Bharat Mata, who is here seen performing the rituals of the goddess Annapurna and cooking a recipe shared by Pushapamala’s friend Gauri Lankesh, an activist and a journalist who was assassinated in 2017. The space selected for Pushpamala’s performance looked like a classroom, featuring a blackboard and student benches.Anupam Saikia, a performance artist based out of Guwahati, performed his work, The Esoteric Pain, which sought to reflect the everyday conflict derived out of structural chaos. The performance brought to the fore the ability to release pain through resistance in the form of everyday ritualised acts.Pushpamala’s performance in progress. Photo: Beyond the Edge.The curatorial intervention also included the staging of two theatrical plays. Tasher Desh (‘A Land of Cards’) is an adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore’s original dance-drama play into a proscenium theatre. It was presented by Panihati Patrak, an environmental activist group active in the North 24 Parganas district who believe that cultural fabric is as important as environmental concerns.The other play, Atho Hidimba Katha, a production by the Samuho Performers’ Collective, who are a women and queer collective, is a queer-feminist retelling of the Mahabaharata. The play poignantly centres the character Hidimba from the epic and the injustice done to her because of her marginalised-caste origins.Anupam Saikia’s performance in progress. Photo: Beyond the Edge.Sharmila Samant, who is based out of Mumbai, responded to the event’s site through a new work that interweaves poetics, the politics of aesthetics and a pedagogy of making that is unique to her praxis. In her work, titled A Garden of Laments, the presence of the artist’s body transcends as gestures into white poppies, and features a path carved for walking in solitude.To grieve is an act of intense remembrance, a continuum of detachments and belongings, and most importantly, a light for transformation. It is the power that drives resistive processes and nourishing momentums that enable care, repair and sharing.Display view of Sharmila Samant’s installation, A Garden of Laments. Photo: Beyond the Edge.The work cites its symbolism from the White Poppy Movement led by the Co-operative Women’s Guild in the United Kingdom in 1933, which comprised women who lost their loved ones in the First World War. It was contrary to the symbol of the red poppy used after the war and was counter-effective in challenging the masculinist war forces that lead to a normative and monumental type of memorialisation.The white poppies emerged as a symbol of protest against armed forces and as a stand for a peaceful position. They served as a counter-memorial against the commemorative structures meant to defend war, hatred and violence.Samant worked with Buddhadev Haldar, Kajol Haldar, Soumen Haldar and Asit Samaddar from the villages of Bankapasi, Mathurapur and Maheshpur in the South 24 Parganas district, which are known for the craft of the shola pith (a material used to make decorative objects, popular during Durga Puja), integral to and originating in Bengal.The installation, placed in the central compound of the school, invited the audience to meander through the pathway in the garden amongst a thousand shola pith white poppies. The poppies ask us to remember the victims of hate crimes.Sharmila Samant. Photo: Beyond the Edge.Her work symbolises her protest and advocacy for peace, a response to the current state of affairs in the country.About her project, Samant says, “In the Indian context, the act of remembrance assumes a radical and political character, a demonstration of solidarity against the normalising of hate crimes in the name of religion, caste, sexuality and gender. Moreover, the status of martyrdom that is extended to perpetrators further complicates the notion of remembrance.”She adds, “In recent years, the country has witnessed an alarming rise in such atrocities perpetuated under the banner of a Hindu ethnonationalist state. The white poppy emerges as an emblem of resistance, a form of protest against this narrative of hate and violence that is being normalised. To remember the victims is an act of defiance.”The Beyond the Edge team. Photo: Beyond the Edge.A Garden of Laments is a processual necessity that invites people to participate in the joy of grieving in the form of an installation. It is an act of defiance by the artist extending her solidarity through her practice in the current times of crises, situated in a parochial site and a curatorial framework that voices constant structural obliteration.Moreover, it is a field that offers an opportunity to foster companionships and a memento of reminiscence that one can return with to their intimate spaces and for their loved ones.‘Erasures and Resistances’ opened on January 12 and concluded on January 15, 2024. The auction to buy the white poppies is live and can be accessed through the link below. The poppies are currently being auctioned accompanied by an authentication certificate that mentions both the names of the artist and the artisan who crafted the poppies. Proceedings from the sale of the poppies will be donated to The Wire, in solidarity with independent journalism and voices critical of the state that are in danger of being silenced.https://artkart.shop/auctions/a-garden-of-lamentsKuldeep Patil is an artist and researcher currently based out of Pune.
