Installation view of Freedom is Notional. Naeem Mohaiemen’s video Nayak – The Lost Hero of History and Live True Life or Die Trying (21 digital C prints with accompanying text). 2010.

The Personal Is Political Photographs, maps and video installations documenting the exasperating aspects of life in South Asia contribute to a subtle exhibition about the vagaries of power, finds Anirudh Chari.

FREEDOM IS NOTIONAL AT EXPERIMENTER, KOLKATA, HELD FROM November 21^st to January 16^th, was an absorbing exhibition which brought together the work of three South Asian artists (Bani Abidi, Naeem Mohaiemen and Shilpa Gupta). The show blended the personal with the political in different ways. At times it was direct, for instance with Mohaiemen’s Live True Life or Die Trying, at others it was more metaphorical as in Bani Abidi’s Intercommunication Devices or Shilpa Gupta’s 100 Hand Drawn Maps of India. The show was full of potent images – often wryly humorous – which eloquently offered some
penetrating insights into the nature of politics and power in our part of the world.

Mohaiemen’s Live True Life or Die Trying, a gripping photo essay with an accompanying text, captured two rallies in Dhaka – one ‘Leftist’ and the other ‘Islamist’ – vying with one another for crowds and publicity. Mohaiemen showed his singular ability to capture the essence of a demonstration while giving full vent to his own prejudices: like the image of a bewildered white man referred to as ‘Whitey’, whom he clearly regarded as an interloper and voyeur and, therefore, an object of derision. This astonishing lack of political correctness was oddly amusing and marked a change from the cliché-ridden righteousness that is usually to be expected from projects of this nature. Nayak, the Lost Hero of History, on the other hand, worked mobile-phone clips into a narrative sequence; set to the tune of Bengali rock music, it conjured up a sense of lost opportunities. The pixellated images created a visually potent atmosphere and texture of their own and conveyed the sense of claustrophobia which people trapped in an unfamiliar situation experience.