Of Liminal Beings and Other Spaces
A climate of uncertain futures and protracted ambiguity combined with an escalating interrogation of binary systems across the world in the past year has increasingly thrown up questions concerning the legitimacy of existing paradigms. This moment of a cultural cusp between the past and an undefined future generates a liminal space for ruminations.
The word 'liminal' comes from the Latin limen, meaning threshold. The term has multiple readings and usage in areas as varied as anthropology, psychology, architecture, myth, literature etc. but usually relates to intermediate, transitional states. By extension, 'liminal beings' are understood to have a protean identity that defies categorisation. In-betweenness or 'threshold' territories are believed to exist at the interstices of binaries, are usually ambivalent and fluid, and essentially invisible and bereft of identities, allowing for re-inventions. These spaces could also be read as creative, where subjectivity is constantly in flux. From a socio-cultural perspective, such spaces which encourage alternative existences can become catalysts for change.The title of the exhibition is inspired by Foucault's 1967 lecture/essay 鈥� 'Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias', in which he rues that we are still governed by "oppositions that remain inviolable, that our institutions and practices have not yet dared to break down." He also refers to an 'epoch of simultaneity and to spaces of otherness, which are neither here nor there, at the same time physical and mental'.
Of Liminal Beings and Other Spaces invites five artists to share the intangible, interstitial spaces that inform their practices, which allude to and elude normative dualistic norms. Arpita Akhanda quests for identity in past/present, colonised/coloniser dualisms, while Arshi Ahmadzai focuses on women's private vs public chronicles via a language that negotiates text and image. Debashish Paul, who identifies as non-binary, grapples with the dominant male/female-gendered readings. Finally, Maksud Mondal creates nature-identical environments that foreground the cycle of life and death, while Prasanta Ghosh's fictional/factual narratives fluidly move between truth and non-truths.
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A climate of uncertain futures and protracted ambiguity combined with an escalating interrogation of binary systems across the world in the past year has increasingly thrown up questions concerning the legitimacy of existing paradigms. This moment of a cultural cusp between the past and an undefined future generates a liminal space for ruminations.
The word 'liminal' comes from the Latin limen, meaning threshold. The term has multiple readings and usage in areas as varied as anthropology, psychology, architecture, myth, literature etc. but usually relates to intermediate, transitional states. By extension, 'liminal beings' are understood to have a protean identity that defies categorisation. In-betweenness or 'threshold' territories are believed to exist at the interstices of binaries, are usually ambivalent and fluid, and essentially invisible and bereft of identities, allowing for re-inventions. These spaces could also be read as creative, where subjectivity is constantly in flux. From a socio-cultural perspective, such spaces which encourage alternative existences can become catalysts for change.The title of the exhibition is inspired by Foucault's 1967 lecture/essay 鈥� 'Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias', in which he rues that we are still governed by "oppositions that remain inviolable, that our institutions and practices have not yet dared to break down." He also refers to an 'epoch of simultaneity and to spaces of otherness, which are neither here nor there, at the same time physical and mental'.
Of Liminal Beings and Other Spaces invites five artists to share the intangible, interstitial spaces that inform their practices, which allude to and elude normative dualistic norms. Arpita Akhanda quests for identity in past/present, colonised/coloniser dualisms, while Arshi Ahmadzai focuses on women's private vs public chronicles via a language that negotiates text and image. Debashish Paul, who identifies as non-binary, grapples with the dominant male/female-gendered readings. Finally, Maksud Mondal creates nature-identical environments that foreground the cycle of life and death, while Prasanta Ghosh's fictional/factual narratives fluidly move between truth and non-truths.
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