The world is often described as a 'global village'. While that may lend a sense of togetherness and shortening of distances; the variety of barriers and obstructions that we live with today is mind boggling. The walls, fences, gated housing societies and the heavily guarded, military-controlled borders stand all around us to make us wary of the ‘other’. These physical manifestations merely point to the deep seated fears and insecurities that civilizations continue to hold on to and sell, even when we know that the visible, physical barriers; even the most sophisticated ones, remain penetrable. The real barriers that serve as the foundation for the physical ones however continue to remain largely invisible, unseen and unexplored. How does one dive into these underlying psychological barriers and the processes within a mind?
In a short story, 'Wenn die Haifische Menschen wären' (If Sharks were men), Bertolt Brecht conjures up the analogy of Sharks as the owners of the ocean and having their personal communities of 'little fishes'. He then refers to the language differences among these fishes. “Little fish, they (sharks) would announce, are well known to be mute, but they are silent in quite different languages and hence find it impossible to understand one another.” He thus draws us first to the barriers created by language (spoken or otherwise) as well as by silence (the inarticulate-able) and then goes on to talk about the wars between the sharks, where the little fishes fight each other so the sharks could carry on with their kingdoms and domains.
In such an ocean, how much would a little fish need to swim and for how long before it crosses the barriers the sharks conjure up for them – the barriers that divide the little fishes with their imaginary arbitrariness?
Zillions of deep-seated, invisible barriers assault the inhabitants of this global village at every step. Everything - from language to art, culture, food, religion, socio-economic strata, sexuality, gender, caste, color, race etc. etc. - props up as a barrier; as one wades through daily routines in an ever more bewildering world with its post-truth politics.
The easiest thing is to accept the given and walk the line. The more tedious however is to search for the invisible barriers and at the very least, lay them bare for all to see. Art holds that potential, if only one wishes to tap into it.
When Paul Klee suggested that, “Art does not reproduce the visible, but makes visible”, he had put that burden on the artist. This show brings together works of contemporary artists from India and Switzerland, each of whom reflect upon the theme , in their own way.
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