Through artworks and objects along with artistic research it presents a thesis that moves beyond the limited framework of Goa as a site, and instead embraces the spirit of Goa or Goa-ness as an atmosphere, a sensation and a feeling of belonging. A range of existing and in-process works in the exhibition take the form of “association charts” spanning linear, parallel and speculative histories; and those preserved in story, song, rumour and remakes.
The curatorial framework employs multiple Entry Points to conceptually “travel”. It hopes to stage material in speculative constellations of devotion, friendship, exploration, trade and conflict, across the Indian Ocean World through and from Goa. Here, I intend to extend iconographic affinities and material relations of art, into the cultural, linguistic and economic enmeshments of trade and travels, could provide a larger imagination for a cultural moment, unique to Goa. These transmissions will form a scaffolding for a range of impulses, artworks, texts, traditions and reproductions to form a “worlding.”
The exhibition focuses three primary research currents/questions/propositions: the first is the staging of the historical as produced in the overlaps between ‘hard’ infrastructures of materials and techniques and the ‘soft’ membranous modes of memory, orality, anecdote and personal archives. The second is to plot the overturning of a closed historical form to produce frameworks where collections, contemporary artistic work and embodied knowledge enmesh to incubate possible pasts and futures. And finally it hopes to generate inspired terrains, where we move beyond regional and site-specific understandings to harness the potential of temporary communities, cultural affinities, co-incidences and nomadism that has enabled a cross pollination of cultures and modes of hybridity along our worlds.
Image credit: Gaurang Naik
The Old GMC Complex
