The idea of the space between what was possible before and what could be possible later; after a crisis or a major historical event, is related to what I consider the appropriate territory for my art practice. A ‘crisis’ can be understood as an inner struggle (thesis) and ‘historical event’ as an outer socio-political struggle (antithesis). The instantaneous contradiction of each (inner-struggle and outerstruggle) enables me to engage with an unknown outcome in synthesis: a body of work. If we can identify their connections and if we critically investigate our individual relationship with the ‘dominant mode of production’ with social hierarchy, then we can unfold their complex positionality in relation to power. Once the limitations and contradictions of art practice have been determined, the obligation is to express with the incorporation and expression of these limits – the art must embody a state of reflexivity – at once of thesis/ synthesis/antithesis.
Being a Propagandist artist of our time:
Image Courtesy: The Artist
The dominant side of the “propaganda model” of the state/capitalists/privileged groups/Brahmins/white supremacists/patriarchal-military-nation supplements physical coercion with a calculated “manufacture of consent”. Therefore, if the truth of contemporary reality lies in much-censored narratives of violence and corporal suffering, the ethical and political task of the propagandist is not merely to report or represent them from a comfortable outsider’s position, but to leave oneself exposed to the brutality of the world in the course of transforming it. However, limits of the self, as well as the limits of the art practice, institution’s superficial criticality has provoked me to rethink interrogating other models for counterpropaganda….
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