NAIR
Akupara
Durational performance
Duration: 2 hours
Materials: Terra-cotta tiles, light, human body
Mentors: VestandPage
Documentation: Fenia Kotsoupoulou, Daz Disley
Research: Becom(th)ings: Posthumanism, Subjectivity, Performance Art
ArtEZ University of Arts, NL (2020)
The roof above my head is displaced
To the bone that carries the burden
The burden of what and where home is
The burden of who decides
When my home is illegitimate
Holding on to what was
And what is left
Precariously, I tread
The ground they threaten to shake.
I positioned my naked body on all fours and balanced a stack of 5-6 terracotta roof tiles on my back and moved slowly. I, intermittently, undulated my spine by arching it up and down and incoherently voiced the syllables of the word ‘Azaadi’ (an Urdu word that translates to freedom). The action took place in the corner of a basement for the duration of two hours. The work elucidates the precariousness of ‘home’ and the politics of the personal and social that influence the notion of home. Akupāra was based on the foundation of transgressing my physical, political and socio-cultural boundaries through engaging with the materiality of my body and another object to address a socio-political issue that was urgent for me. This work was birthed from the deep sense of uncertainty, loss, rage and fear that resulted due to the CAA and NRC laws and the current socio-political situation in India. It questions the power of authority figures to determine the fate of identity and belonging of its people. The work brings to light the constant state of risk that is present in holding on to the notion of home and the constant potential of loss of that home and sense of belonging. It brings to surface the suppression, oppression, struggle and immense endurance that is required to sustain, hold and fight for your home and freedom.
In relation to my artistic research, the work explores the contractual, affective and agential relations between my body and the body of the roof tiles. The material that constitutes the roof above the head, one's home. We shared a co-dependant relation. Precarious and vulnerable, affecting one another over the duration of 2 hours.
