Curated Art Exhibition: The Politics of Displacement
As artists, there is a personal stake in everything we create. It’s an inherent system that we sometimes don’t even acknowledge or give much weightage to. For this exhibition, we want to look at the self, the personal and the political.
The exhibition takes an interdisciplinary approach to displacement in its many forms, with an explicit focus on forced displacement. Though this exhibition, we aim to feature South Asian, Asian, and Middle Eastern artists covering the theme of forced displacement from both an individualistic and a collective lens: merging the personal with the political seamlessly.
To achieve a broad understanding of the theme which is reflective of the span of the lived realities of displaced people, we encourage different kinds of creative practitioners to participate in the exhibition regardless of their medium or format. Writers, designers, contemporary, multimedia and installation artists. In their works, the artists may incorporate inspirations and observations from either their own experiences of displacement or illustrate those of displaced. The aim is to put forward a broad body of work, interpreting forced displacement from a personal lens and to present it for a collective perusal of the theme as it is still very much relevant to countless of people.
For this exhibition, we encourage the inclusion of the ‘self’ of the artists and exploring the nuances of the idea of self in their works. It ranges from the loss of self-identity or its rediscovery, to the reflections on the lived experiences and its impact on the psychological makeup on oneself due to the politics of displacement. As Edward Said pointed out, “[exile] is the unhealable rift forced….between the self and its true home.” Through this exhibition, we aim to portray the interlinked relationship of grief and nostalgia that comes with being forced to move away from home.
