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About Identity as Crisis and Listening to the Inner Voice of Difference

“Identity only becomes an issue when it is in crisis, when something assumed to be fixed, coherent, stable is displaced by the experience of doubt and uncertainty.” – Kobena Mercer, Welcome to Jungle

There was a time when Indian artists used to handle identity as an issue. They knew it well that their identity as Indian artists and as artists hailing from geographically, demographically, politically and linguistically defined regions was in crisis. Besides proving themselves to be aesthetically worthy, works of art had multiple responsibilities to perform in the society. During the years that followed the national independence from the colonial masters, proving identity as against the attributions of the West became one of the major aspects our art production. At times it became politically volatile and defensive in nature and at other times it became substantially derivative in direction. Whatever angle one had taken for assimilating those works in the theoretical framework of modernism, identity would have come to play a pivotal role. Identity was in crisis so was the Indian modern art.

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In our contemporary art scenario identity politics or assertion of identity as an issue seems to have become less in importance. The transition from modernity to post-modernity has facilitated this. However, one cannot say that this transitional reduction of crisis purely implies the loss of identity both as a preoccupation and as an issue. In post-modern art production, it is observed, identity comes to play a different role, simultaneously assuming the nature of an issue and a solution. The interchangeability of identity, in this sense, facilitates the contemporary Indian artists to vouchsafe the art with a double edged-ness. Identity becomes fluid, appearing at one stage as a socio-political issue and disappearing at certain stages as a convenient masquerade of affirmative globalization.

Noted black cultural theorist Kobena Mercer in his statement postulates the crisis of identity within the realm of uncertainty and doubt. Detaching his observation from the peculiar context of British racism during the eighties of the last century and projecting it over the euphoric scenario of Indian contemporary art scene reveals an interesting picture. The Black expatriates of Britain in the last century were fighting their case of identity through the projection and protection of difference. The assumed hegemony of White racism became a conceptual parameter (and a painfully pragmatic reality) for deciding the difference of the Black. Surprisingly, Indian contemporary artists seem to have lost a hegemonic paradigm to mark off their shift and difference.

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The hegemonic paradigm that decided the worthiness of a work of art to be called ‘Indian’ came once from the West, which had asserted its superiority through racial claims. Having the racial differences collapsed through economic competitiveness and the flattening of the world through corporate enterprises, the distanced racial inferiority assumed the forms of intellectual and physical superiority. Indian contemporary art has a tendency to transgress into the realms of non-identity and non-crisis thanks to its assumed intellectual and physical superiority now.

The fluidity of identity, perhaps subconsciously accepted by the Indian contemporary artists however poses a double problem also. The tag ‘Indian’ once connoted ‘national’ as there were sub classifications like North Indian, South Indian, North East Indian, Punjabi, Maharashtrian, Madras etc. An artist assumed superiority when he or she (rarely) could transcend his position within these ‘intra-national’ classifications. Despite the efforts made for this deliberate transcendence of identity, every artist would have become an ‘Indian’ artist had they gone outside the geographical boundaries of the country. Interestingly, today each artist in India, irrespective of his or her place of birth, provided he or she is successful in the art market, is an ‘Indian’ artist. The tag ‘Indian’ now connotes success within the nation state. Without deliberations the aforementioned classifications evaporate into thin air.

Marrying affirmative identity with success and divorcing identity difference with the same is the real crisis that the Indian contemporary artists face these days. Aesthetic differences created by the ‘Indian’ artists get ironed out by the euphoric critical jargons of art critics who behave as the butlers of the art market sahibs. The artists who belong to the sub categories (unfortunately ‘Indians’ by administrative reasons and ‘mallus’, ‘panjus’, ‘bongs’, ‘marathis’ by aesthetic reasons!) are neglected for the same reasons of identity.

Two questions come to the fore. One, can the Indian contemporary artists now deal with identity as an issue of crisis () Two, if at all they do so, what would be their aesthetic strategies to create an identity of difference () If we do not address the former issue, we have to accept that we are eschewing from certain responsibilities towards the immediate society and accept the notion of the world being flat. If we do not address the latter issue, the aesthetics of the contemporary artists would become the butt of jokes in the nearest future. Our artists should be listening to their inner voice of difference to save the situation.

December 2006

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