NAIR
Monument
Performance and installation
Duration: 1 hour
Materials: bricks, flowers
Documentation: Vignesh
Bangalore, IND (2019)
As human beings, we tend to put our bodies on a pedestal. We monumentalise ourselves in ways that glorify the human form which either worships it or curbs it. This performance-cum-installation looks at this exact phenomena. Our bodies like flowers grow organically, instinctively, knowingly towards the sky, towards exploration and liberation but at the same time the softness and sensuous psyche and soma is in touch with terra- the rootedness and sense of belonging that emerges from its sensory freedom. This form is you and me. We. Humankind. We are born into a society that doesn’t quite support this instinct. The careful and unattended conditioning informs us throughout our life, whether it’s the gender norms that our bodies adhere to or the moral sculpting that our mind is processed through. It all finds its way through the rubble of the past, through traditions unchanged and notions unquestioned. It becomes culture. And this culture seeps into us whether it’s through subverted gazes while walking down a street, or building mind shields to protect our bodies from potential abuse, or building walls that convince us of never wanting or exploring. A form of self-infliction that inhibits us emotionally and socially. The metaphorical building of walls, in the performance, journeys through the various different ways and modes in which we build each brick of our inhibitions (some are calculative, some burdening, some swift as a habit). The exhaustion and numbing of the self is the consequence of this journey. But these walls aren’t the only ones. In the name of morality, society and culture impose these walls. We are monumentalised and a form of ruination occurs on our bodies through gender based discrimination and abuse that inhibits the breathing of the authentic self. The result: the body finding itself in a state of claustrophobia. The placing of flowers evokes a paradox. The paradox of life and death. The life of the free self and the death of the authentic self. In my culture, the Indian culture, flowers are laid on the dead. The placing of flowers evokes grief. Flowers primarily symbolises the worship of creation for me. But it also mourns for the death of a part of ourselves. The part that holds on to liberation.
