THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS OF ART

As the Kochi-Muziris Biennale—deferred to November this year due to the pandemic—dusts away the cobwebs at Aspinwall House, unspools the yarn at Cabral Yard, and contextualises the contemporary at Kashi Art Cafe, it is time to look back at some of the art extravaganza’s most thought-provoking narratives.

- SIDDHARTH DASGUPTA

IF I WERE TO USE one word to describe my decade-plus existence in the Middle East, the chosen utterance would be “ephemeral.” Within a melange of expatriates and immigrants (depending on which-world country you were from), conversations on transience, identity, and exile were never too far off the table. This held especially true when some of your closest friends came with hyphenated labels: Syrian-Lebanese, Palestinian-Syrian, Lebanese-Palestinian, and so on. For an Indian submerged in Arab notions of friendship and diplomacy, the decade was an exploration into a life of no fixed address.

Those same midnight conversations came rushing back to me in a flood when the bloodsoaked existence of Alan Kurdi washed ashore a beach in Turkey in 2015. Similarly, lifeless bodies of his mother and brother were soon by his side. I gazed into the young boy’s soul—through a mixture of fierce reportage and the sort of media coercion that almost slithers in unnoticed—so did the world. So did Raúl Zurita. Only, the preoccupations of the Chilean protest poet and artist were on the fate of Alan’s forgotten five-year-old brother, Galip.