Cultural Humility

There was a talk by Okwui Enwezor, an eminent writer, curator and artistic director of Venice Biennale 2015, who was in town for the Kochi Muziris Biennale 2014-15, south India. He touched on some interesting areas of art and culture in his speech.

He was comparing Kochi Biennale with the one in Johannesburg, happened in 1996, South Africa, during the apartheid era and both had the similar kinds of ambience as well as challenges. He is from Nigeria and he told about the visa problems he faced in Italy decades ago. One had to have the right country's passport in those days.

When contemporary artists work on site specific installations for a Biennale or Documenta or Triennial, many do not ship a completed work. They work with the materials which is available at the site. So the shipping expenses, the environmental damage, the customs issues, the delay tensions and the like are by passed. But for a traveling artist a new place also can present unexpected challenges.

Some site specific works are cleverly created using local materials and done low tech, but the core idea of the work is communicated very well. Some artists make friendship with local folks and let them also participate in the project, which gives one a 'cultural belonging' and mutual comfort, like the Portuguese artist Rego 23 did in Kochi Biennial 2012.

An art practitioner goes through strange experiences in a new country. At first, one travels as a 'nomad,' if it happens, settles as an 'immigrant' and then later on the person becomes a 'pilgrim', back in his or her country of origin. These points by Enwezor, which are very relevant to the art practice now, have triggered some related thoughts in my mind.

Sometimes an 'immigrant' feels like an 'outcast'. Exile makes one sort of a 'misfit'. It all depends on the new country and how relevant his or her placement there. It doesn't even have to be a new country, rather each region seems to have its own resistance based on a specific identity of the exile. Now a-days most countries are intolerant to new arrivals. One gets a feeling that the whole world is becoming unfriendly and less welcoming or at least that is what news media is projecting.

So, amidst all these restlessness of the 'era of movement', an 'immigrant artist' faces more problems than a person who just goes to a new country, as an art practioner's true placement in the new place seems very sketchy now.

Everybody wants to belong somewhere. This longing is not easily getting fulfilled because some kind of alienation gives the person an 'out of place' feeling. It doesn't necessarily have to be this way and it also gets dissolved at times, if not solved completely, by becoming the part of the art community at the new place. But all these are happening inside one's mind. Yet it feels real, as our perception is our reality. Being an 'exile' is primarily a state of mind.

Each person is identified with a particular culture or a combination of many. This can be of the country of origin or of many other aspects of that individual. This generally defines and determines his/er identity and sense of self. The person is proud of this and it seems reasonable too. So one wants to maintain that.

If one does not have the humility to acknowledge and respect other's cultures, the division can create an alienation and intolerance towards the 'other' who we don't know or may be don't want to know. We objectify them as an alien or as an enemy sometimes. This leads to further polarisation and the media celebrates it with sound bites and 'breaking news.'

Does one's 'identity' define where one resides, or does the 'home' determine one's identity? Belonging to someone or to somewhere seems like a historic necessity and a privilege for us. One would think that identifying with something, will lead to eventual eradication of the separation anxiety, which is a primal urge it seems.

Who is the real other? In a deeper sense, anything that's not I, me or mine is alien to me. If one wants to come out of this, there needs to establish some kind of kinship among fellow humans. I think art and culture has to create this common space that nurtures certain 'cultural humility' in a person from the younger age, which other institutions cannot easily provide.

The idea of 'identity' itself is very subjective one to many creatives. The dimension of 'cultural belonging' is a threshold from where one is able to look outside as well as from inside. This elusive space of 'neither this nor that' is a fertile domain from which fresh ideas come out.

Exile is a mindset, so is the immigrant, nomad and the pilgrim or any such identity or any collective identification resulting in the definitions of 'identity politics'. It's all in the mind basically and this is all a conditioned process of perpetual self making, by each one of us. So who is really identifying with whom is to be observed carefully.