Inhabiting Wounds: In Conversation with Arpita Akhanda

Focused on the persistence of historical wounds on the collective consciousness, Arpita Akhanda’s work inhabits a cross-disciplinary space of weaving, performance, and still and moving images. With archival maps, oral histories, textile and photography as central to her practice, Akhanda looks at how memory can potentially function as evidence in both opposition to and in tandem with official narratives that are premised on homogenising impulses. Inspired by her grandfather’s stories and poems referencing the Partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947, the artist uses text from multimedia sources such as newspapers and books to create work that plays with the tradition of warp and weft to disturb images and alter perceptual focus.

Drawing from the same impulse, Akhanda performed 360 Minutes of Requiem at the India Art Fair 2022. Here, she engaged in a six-hour long performance (divided into three uninterrupted hours over two days each) as she attempted to dismantle the knots of a long roll of barbed wire. Cutting through her skin, the process produced pain as well as an intensity of engagement that manifested with the durational progress of the act. A comment on the role of borders and attendant notions of institutional segregation, Akhanda’s performance let the “human” spill, as the metal anchors were meticulously laid out on the stage after being dissociated from the wire. Using the norms of state-produced cartographies, the artist re-evaluates the role of maps in locating identity through image and body. In this conversation, Akhanda speaks about the intent behind her work, her process and the experience of performing at the India Art Fair.

^{(Featured Image: 360 Minutes of Requiem by Arpita Akhanda, India Art Fair 2022.)}

Recorded on 1 May 2022. 

For more glimpses of the India Art Fair, please click here.