OF BARRIERS AND DISTANCES

The project brings together five Swiss and five Indian artists to reflect upon the theme ‘Of Barriers and Distances’ and its meaning in today’s world, through their works and art practice. It encompasses an intense, two weeks long residency at the Ajitara Dotwalk Art Residency and a month long exhibition at Gallery Dotwalk in India; and a sharing and reflection on the project in Basel.

The project is led by Parvez, an artist and curator of Indian origin who currently lives in Switzerland.

CURATORIAL NOTE:

The world is often described as a ‘global village’, lending a sense of togetherness and shortening of distances between people. In stark contrast to this idea is the presence of physical and procedural barriers that enforce segregation, confinement and exclusion. The walls, fences, gated housing societies, and the heavily guarded, military-controlled borders that surround us, increase the very distance that a ‘global village’ suggests it reduces. The logic of barriers is a circular logic where cause and effect change places to justify each other. The necessity of barriers presupposes differences and exclusive rights. The imposition of barriers enforces segregation and exclusion. The differences resulting from segregation and exclusion are then affirmed as the reason for the necessity of barriers.

In the 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, having their communities of ‘little fishes.’ Referring to the lingual differences among the fishes he writes, “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 first draws our attention to the barriers to speak: for the little fishes are mute while the sharks can speak. Then he draws our attention towards the barrier, for the little fish, to even be together in their silence. He then lays bare the social necessity for these barriers: the little fishes must stay silent and fight each other so that the sharks could continue with their kingdom of exploitation.

There are zillions of visible and invisible barriers that enforce segregation and exclusion amongst the inhabitants of this global village. Brecht’s story opens up a way for us to visualize what is presented as a matter-of-fact as an effect of a barrier erected in service of a kingdom of exploitation.

Each socially accepted barrier stands on the grave of a question and the world of art is no exception to the rule. One may ask, who decides which work of art is worthy of being exhibited? How does one artwork become worthy of millions while another rots in an unglorious surrounding? Who decides which food enters the world of celebrated ‘cuisines’? Whose tonal understandings decide the hierarchies in music? What ensures the impositions of these standards of judgment and their acceptability by the people? And, whose kingdoms do these barriers protect? 

The easiest thing is to accept the given and walk the line. The more tedious, however, is to search for the invisible linkages between barriers and kingdoms.

When Paul Klee suggested that “Art does not reproduce the visible, but makes visible,” he had put the burden of making such invisible links visible on the artist.

Of Barriers and Distances, emerges from these thoughts and brings together works of contemporary artists from India and Switzerland, each reflecting on the theme in their own way.

Parvez
Basel. 2024.

Dates
Residency:                   24.07 – 7.08.2024
Panel Discussion:        27.07.2024
Exhibition:                    3.08 – 3.09.2024
Reflections in Basel:    2.10 – 6.10.2024

Venues 
India
 Dotwalk Ajitara Art Residency, New Delhi
 Gallery Dotwalk, Gurgaon
 

Switzerland 
 DOCK, Basel
 VIA, Basel

Supported by
Embassy of Switzerland in India and Bhutan
Aargauer Kuratorium
Kulturstiftung des Kantons Thurgau