Shiva Gor
Art
and Identity
By
Shiva Gor
“The
central concern of my experiment-based art lies within the politics of
representation in various ‘cultures’. My works explore the politics of cultural
appropriation, the notion of inclusion and exclusion of any minority community,
and how it shapes the social existence of various cultural artifacts. Apart
from regional spaces, I also notice the addresses that the same objects provide
in a white cube space. My critique is to bring forth the ‘objects’ members of
the Banjara community use in their daily life, and arrange them within the
milieu of the urban landscape with other modern-day paraphernalia.
“Particularly,
I feel it reconstitutes a new space that facilitates a critical inquiry into
the communities and their socio-political existence. In addition, the current
research touches upon the Duchampian treatment of distinguishing art from
non-art, by making various arrangements of used and discarded objects, along
with objects that are specific to my community and its cultural life. As
someone who grew up in cities, my intention is to excavate the cultural
residues of my belongings to the tradition, and look at the reified ways in
which one is dictated—by the ruling ideology—to consume the artifacts in the
name of ‘identity’. This inherent contradiction animates not only the current
project, but runs through my entire practice.
“The
process is largely based on delinking the conditioned identity. The other
preoccupation has been to place my exploration with these so-called cultural
artifacts within the dominant art, historical and aesthetic discourses of art
in India. Thus, I benefit from disclosing the skewed cultural and historical
narratives of the ruling ideology in the country, and how that governs the very
act of ‘seeing’ these objects. I am addressing the method of ‘estranging’ this
conditioned way of seeing.”
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