Anupam Saikia

From my childhood I have beheld community conflicts, riots, and identity controversies in the context of Assam. My memory is loaded with the visuals of burning houses/ villages in the past. They have created a psychological tension and fabricated a silent space in human psyche not only for that particular community but also have extended the anxiety in the surroundings. I have tried to depict that psychological violence and the silence in this performance. I believe that when these kinds of conflicts happen, a space of illusion/delusion is created in our psychology because every conflict is a product of political manipulations that have happened in the past. I have related this narrative to that of “Lanka Daahan” from the Ramayana metaphorically where Hanuman had burnt the state of Lanka. the constructed space, Campus of Gauhati University... // June 2015 For this performance the space was created like the space where to the violence, riots, community conflict constantly ha...

This work is dedicated to Mahant Laldas who was shot dead under suspicious circumstances in the night of November 16, 1993. Laldas was appointed by a court of law as the chief priest in the Ramjanmabhomi temple 1983 and continued in the position until the year 1992. The Babri Masjid was destroyed on December 6, 1992 and Laldas opposed the demolition of Babri Masjid. I get inspiration from the documentary on Babri Masjid, named “in the name of God” directed by Anand Patwardhan, to do this photographic performance. I think, the incident happened in 1992 for the sake of the birth place of Lord Rama was a re-interpretation of the myth by the Hindu fundamentalist group and they created a drama to manipulate and provoke the people. process In my work I am using some still images from the documentary to represent my ideas and the figurative image, anthropomorphic from is re-interpretation of a mythological character from Hindu epic. Times to time people are re-interpr...

Conflicting space is a project under Srinagar Biennale where rather than public art project this exchange is about making a visual narrative between two different conflicting spaces. Both the spaces “Howrah and Sweden” in one hand carrying a potential living historical memory, on the other hand also has the hidden possibilities of contradiction. In this Art project the artist from India and Sweden are trying to question and explore the area of hidden possibilities through their different kind of medium. The exchange and the collaborating with two curator one is from Sweden Tamara de Laval and Chi muk from India starts with a dialogue between the artist which is more about idea of space, intimacy, bonding, struggle, body, labor and contradiction of nature and culture. Also the artists are trying to evolve the possibilities of conflict between visible and invisible line where there is always much hidden disturbance and conflict within the space and the space become the boisterous sil...

I n the medium of “Art performance” ,the politics of the body is very prominent i.e. more physical, solid, existential, contextual in front of the audience where audience can feel the attachment, connect - reconnect with the visual that emerges from the medium. I am exploring the body as a surface and playing with it and try to understand the politics of surface through my experiment. The visuals or images of my work and performances I have made so far tried to explore the nature of chaos and violence in my surroundings camouflage in our psychology also being an Assamese I would like to relate my Assam experiences with the recent global developments. I am engaging with those questions that how personal narrative has an important role in the social context, how the personal narratives or conflict are become universal? This project starts from a personal dialogue within family members. The narrative is like: when I am working in studio at Guwahati my parents called me every day...