How art can lend perspective in times of disaster

Veer Munshi

I HAPPEN to be one among the many who left Kashmir in 1990 due to the political upsurge. There are many layers to the situation. Pandits lost their homeland, and Muslims their composite culture. Looking back at the 1990s, I still get goosebumps remembering how one left the Valley. I never thought it will be such a long walk for 32 years. Maybe art came to my rescue, which was a release as well as therapeutic. To begin with, I was agitated, and the personal became political and I painted my felt experiences, mostly morbid images, on canvas and mounted my first large show in 1992 in New Delhi. It was presented by Ebrahim Alkazi. Most of it was about exodus, atrocities, human rights violations. Soon after, I was invited to the United Nations at Geneva to present my experiences through the visual language, but there were no takers back in India.

Art activism grew in me and I tried various ways to tell the stories, address the homeland issues through public performances, and along with other colleagues, build consciousness and address the pain, but the state and Centre machinery was all frozen. What could be the role of an artist, I wondered. I focused on the expressions of refugees, their suffering. My work on abandoned houses shows it all. Silence speaks volumes sometimes. When you paint the pain, you don’t see which community it belongs to. I continued the political language through various mediums — paintings, videos, photographs, sculptures, installations. I have addressed a range of subjects in the course of my artistic career, but exile remains my most fundamental preoccupation. I consistently used art to reflect my anguish at the situation in my home state. Making a human rights statement rather than a political one, I sought to highlight the turmoil that comes with separation from heritage, and to highlight the increasingly narrow space that exists for culture and art in the Valley. I am convinced that art, because of its universal nature, can play a significant role in the resolution of the Kashmir situation. Unlike other contemporary artists, though, viewing pleasure is no motivator for me in the creation of art; rather, it is about sharing personally-felt experiences as a ‘refugee’. I returned 15 years later to my home, which was burnt down in 1994, so I felt like scribbling my memories and started documenting these familiar abandoned houses.

Another series, Shrapnel, was a result of being caught up between security forces and stone-pelters way back in 2010 in downtown Srinagar.

There are a lot of references of art reflecting the uncertain times. Visual artists have expressed their concerns, experiences, engagements with such situations — it may be war, epidemic, nature’s fury, conflict or any such issue.

A number of Kashmiri artists, writers, theatre activists and musicians have expressed their concerns through their respective languages on the subject of exile and the Kashmir problem, in general, but somehow, not much discourse took place, nor any intent to solve the problem.

I believe an artist can work as a catalyst between communities for building the nation. Art practices can archive the reality of time, change the mood, and drive the attention to build consciousness towards the right path. Films remain a powerful medium and much can be achieved if used sensibly, yet I feel Bollywood needs to have more films on such realities of time. Issues like Partition, migration, displacement need to be addressed in a way that these can lead to solutions, and not widen the divide. Garam Hawa and Tamas were powerful depictions, but never triggered much debate, I guess.

I tried to go back to connect with the new generation of Kashmiris born post-1990s from both communities. They may not have known what the past was, but got engaged through various felt expressions. The works were displayed at Kochi Biennale’s Srinagar Biennale Pavilion.

There were a few films centred around Kashmir like Roja, Mission Kashmir and Haider. I recently watched two films, Shikara and The Kashmir Files, both based on certain facts, though the treatment of language differs. The latter is more hard-hitting. Art, I hope, should continue to inspire and give perspective to the human condition in times of disaster.

— The writer is an acclaimed artist

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