INFUSED COMBUSTION (Through the subconscious state)

Art Houz Gallery 19 th March 2016 for the Show 

I RISE (EDITION II) 

A Dialogue Between Work and Space 

Ceaseless (endless) waiting for justice and agony of going through the process is constant. In this pretext especially as women the challenges are multi fold and in India it seems to be all the more complex. Socially and politically the pace at which these issues of rape are being addressed is really a cause for concern. This leads to a psychological state of self combustion. My performance is an attempt to bring these inner traumatic humiliation agony and ceaseless state that goes in the mind of a victim and also state of society and their sociological concerns in our country. It is not new that we constantly come across so many news on rape, but what happens when we hear them or read them in news and then wither away with time but we don’t know what happened to the victim, there constant struggle, whether they have got justice. Sometime we too try to become part of mass protest to fight for justice, but nothing of this can really make us understand what happens in victim’s mind, trauma they undergo over the time. Living in state of stigma, shame and loosing dignity in normal life, whether they are able to take so much load or they just erase their existence even before the justice is done. The stories of rape victims are unlimited and getting justice take long time or sometime justice is denied too. 

The waiting is long, there is constant struggle in the mind of victim and carry all sorts of pressure and tension. Most of the time victim loses hope and strength, they don’t see light, they are left alone on this path and they are lost forever. Sadly this cycle goes on, it is not new and we don’t know how many unknown and known names lose their battle/fight for justice. 

Through my work I am just trying to bring small part of this whole cycle. My attempt is to see, read and bring this state of individual victim’s tension and traumatic experience through my work. I feel this traumatic fear and pain is slowly spreading in our society and no wonder one day it will become mass hysteria of pain and tension. The fear and insecurity is spreading in the society and we don’t have answers to it, we need to seek and find out, we need to heal in mass.

I tried to create a situation where the victim’s state of mind can be metaphorically represented through performance where my body directly reciprocated to the psychological state of inner, tension, insecurity bound in time/ space. I tried to move with long hair plait which over a time becomes ball of pain while releasing psychological tension with one foot and mouth bound with brick and black salt and other foot stretching towards healing bowl of milk.

The work is in more abstract represent of my subconscious impulse to such situation and I try to bring the healing element through an act from audience participation it is interactive performance where audience were asked to participate in act of planting glass of milk around the black ball In this performance audiences also marked their Negatives (pain) by burning portion of white cloth their by releasing their negativity and healing themselves.

Dimple B Shah

2016