News Story

Evoking Nazir – An Open Studio at THE LOFT

An exhibit/ performance titled ‘Evoking Nazir,’ by Inder Salim, a multi-faceted activist-artist hailing from Kashmir, was held at The Loft at Lower Parel, the artists’ studio and residency space on September 26. It was part of the Open Studio presented by Inder Salim as part of his residency hosted by The Loft.

Inder Salim presented a 45-minute slide talk and the performance presentation documented work done over the past few years. Salim’s  provocative performances, documentation, photographs and assemblages attempt to explore notions of self, of ‘otherness,’ the idea of ‘Kashmir,’ land & its politics, and displacement. He works in a variety of mediums, including painting, performance, video, text and photography.

Salim’s practice is unusual, to say the least. He has picked up turds left by homeless people in New Delhi and exhibited them, swimming in jars of formalin.  In London, he sat astride the statue of Oscar Wilde at Trafalgar Square and exposed his derriere. He also stood next to Queen’s Guard, wearing a red uniform with “1857” appliquéd on the back in defiance of British police. Last year he held a mock auction in a cobbler’s shop. 
 
For this New Delhi based Kashmiri, performance art is way to enter the skin of an issue. Virtually everything in his life is either a performance or an element of a performance and all his projects are anchored to a message. About ten years ago, the artist (earlier Inder Tickoo) became Inder Salim, so as to symbolically fuse the Hindu and Muslim heritages of Kashmir.
 
A self-taught artist, Salim grew up in the small town of Bijbehara in Kashmir. It was only after he came to Delhi in the early Nineties that he began considering art as a career – he began as a painter, but he was drawn to performance as it allows him a vehicle for activism.
 
Salim says that the project, ‘Evoking Nazir,’ is a half-imagined, quasi-real peep into his past in Kashmir. Nazir was his friend and his father was an opium smuggler, who used to visit Mumbai, then Bombay. Nazir would tell fascinating stories of his visits to the young Inder.  With that history and personal memory, the texture of Nazir's body is now ‘the text and image’ on the wall. “The “unpredictable” in art seduces me endlessly,” says Salim 

The residency, hosted by The Loft at Lower Parel, in keeping with its annual programme of national and international residencies, was supported by JSW Foundation.

- From A Correspondent.