"The image of paper plane is always silent it's not loud per say."
Outlook's Chinki Sinha in conversation with Ehtisham Azhar, a Kashmiri artist. In 2018, he was a part of the Srinagar Biennale -- one among the group of 14 artists who felt the world should witness the emotions people in "paradise lost" live with every day. He spoke to us about silence, communication shutdowns, his project Paper Planes and the origination of it.
Videographer: Romana Manpreet
Video Editor: Sudhanshu
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#Kashmir #Art #EhtishamAzhar #PaperPlane #Kashmiri
Outlook's Chinki Sinha in conversation with Ehtisham Azhar, a Kashmiri artist. In 2018, he was a part of the Srinagar Biennale -- one among the group of 14 artists who felt the world should witness the emotions people in "paradise lost" live with every day. He spoke to us about silence, communication shutdowns, his project Paper Planes and the origination of it.
Videographer: Romana Manpreet
Video Editor: Sudhanshu
Follow us:
Website: https://www.outlookindia.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Outlookindia
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/outlookindia/
X: https://twitter.com/Outlookindia
Whatsapp: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaNrF3v0AgWLA6OnJH0R
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@OutlookMagazine
Dailymotion: https://www.dailymotion.com/outlookindia
#Kashmir #Art #EhtishamAzhar #PaperPlane #Kashmiri
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NewsTranscript
00:00It's like you have a picture but it has a lot of missing pieces, you have a jigsaw
00:08but a lot of pieces are missing.
00:10So silence is those pieces, silence completes the context, it brings forth those horrors
00:17in the society or the cultural fabric or the political fabric that generally we do not
00:21talk about.
00:23Silence is like the subconscious in the human mind.
00:29If you can talk about Paper Planes and this idea of silence and how you look at silence
00:32basically.
00:33Paper Planes actually started in 2019, somewhere in 2019 and it got aggravated with the fact
00:42when I was kind of forced into not having any connection with the family, no know-hows
00:53of where the family or how the family is.
00:56So it was a general situation back at that time because there were curfews and cuts.
01:03And you were in Australia?
01:04I was in Australia at that time, I had no way of contacting my family for three months,
01:09it went on for three months, I guess 90 days is the number stuck in my head.
01:14And during that phase there was a sense of helplessness, irritability, like why?
01:22If something had to be done, you did it, why would you cut the communication off?
01:28And also what added to it was like there were people who were ill back home and you had
01:34no way of knowing how they are, did something significant happen?
01:38So this all led to this very basic kind of a feeling, this helplessness about we can't
01:45even deal with this simple situation which seems non-existent in many parts of the world.
01:54I had previously worked with a group of students in Australia and at that time also the curfews
01:59were a bit frequent here.
02:00So one day due to the projects they were proposing for kind of approval, I decided to indulge
02:14with the students in a different manner, I asked them that okay, you are saying all
02:17of these but they are fine, how if we look at the fact that I am your supervisor and
02:23you are not able to connect to me tomorrow?
02:26And they were like what do you mean, that's impossible, we have internet, we have phones,
02:30so how can we not connect with you?
02:33And I told them that see, we get communication cut-offs very commonly here, they couldn't
02:41believe it and they were like that's impossible, that's very much possible, what you can do
02:47is you can open up the Google and you can search this.
02:50And they did and they came back to me and they said yes it happens, so we had no idea
02:55it happens, it happens very much in the real time.
02:58So my question to you is how would you tackle a situation like this as artists?
03:04So what would be your mode, how would you investigate it and what would your questions
03:08be?
03:09So I made a project out of it and the project was also on the similar lines, they didn't
03:12make paper planes but what they did was like they took all the aspects into consideration
03:19and they found the impossibility of sending me anything and so they prepared a courier
03:26pack and they labelled it and they left it on the gallery floor to be posted, which it
03:32couldn't be posted and that was a very beautiful work from those students, it was a work that
03:37was invigorating on many levels, not just fulfilling the assignment, it was actually
03:44transcending the assignment by far by taking into account the global scenarios or the nuances
03:50in the global functioning of the communities and trying to apply it on themselves and giving
03:56a critical analysis of it.
03:59So similarly when this project started manifesting, those were the questions with me and I started
04:04reverting back to the basic question of the desire of having the freedom to at least connect
04:13with people and that was somehow being taken away.
04:17So I went to the paper planes and the paper planes because of their innocent image.
04:23Did you make any paper planes when you were a kid?
04:25Yes, we did.
04:26You grew up in Baramulla, right?
04:27I did grow up in Baramulla, I did make paper planes although they were very frustrating
04:32for me at points because sometimes I wanted to make those really intricate ones and I couldn't.
04:40For me it was mostly like paper planes because Baramulla, what's noticeable in Baramulla
04:48even now is that after 3 or 4, you'll see this moment of air, this breeze flowing or
04:56sometimes the wind is quite strong also but it's throughout there or mostly between the
05:02spring and the autumn season.
05:05So every day even if it's 28 degrees in the evening you will have a respite, you will
05:09have a bit of rain, some wind.
05:12Water bodies were a bit far.
05:15You have Baramulla as geographically if you know it, it's divided into two by the Jhelum.
05:22So there are not many access points to the river as such and the residential areas are
05:31a bit towards the insides and trails of the city.
05:37Saying that, I would make these planes and they would just be fascinating to watch fly
05:43and when I later came back to it in my research, when this idea of constructing paper planes
05:53struck me, I started definitely looking into the meaning and the symbolism or the metaphor
05:59of this paper plane, why do we kind of do it even as children and the only reason I
06:05found was that the desire to experience freedom or to attain something that appears unattainable
06:12because for a child to do that is a pinnacle of creativity and for any individual to desire
06:20a sense of freedom or doing something that they feel they have been barred to do marks
06:26a nature that is critical.
06:33But that being said on the conceptual front, the image of the paper plane is always silent.
06:40It does not have any, it's not loud per se, if I have to rephrase the last phase.
06:48It's not loud.
06:49It's just a subtle representation of an airplane that a child makes and that's what made it
06:58interesting for me, having such a simple image and carrying such a weighted connotation.
07:06It allowed, it kind of pushed me more into looking into it to the point where the project
07:12started growing and metamorphosizing into different executionary or different executions
07:20in such, different completions in such.
07:24Like I started with the idea to have these made by the people and then collecting it
07:29and then displaying it in the vitrines, like in the museum setting.
07:32But then it went on where I wanted to have it as a correspondence so that this would
07:39serve as a feature, as a letter.
07:41And then finally, I wanted to merge both of the initial and the later one.
07:47And in between also, I wanted to do these digital drawings of it, kind of having this
07:52kind of a labeled, classified aspect of paper plane, like I call this work as anatomy of
08:03paper planes to give that a sense of a more dissected and investigated form.
08:11Because silence is not taking out everything.
08:14Silence is just taking out the loud parts, bringing the noise down to the point where
08:22it feels like a whisper rather than a shout.
08:26So I think that's what's, that's how I work with the silence in my work and in my understanding
08:33of the issues or questions that I work on.
08:38Silence has been that kind of a part for me since my early childhood and it had continued
08:45through.
08:48But yeah, sometimes you, when you are experimenting in some works, you do not, earlier works,
08:54I was not being conscious of the silence, but it was only after a certain time when
08:59I wanted my work to grow in the sense I wanted it to be more mature.
09:04I wanted it to be more interactive.
09:09I wanted it to have a sense of inclusiveness in terms of the reader, that the reader is
09:14a part of it also.
09:16It's only then when I started analysing my work and its elements that I found that on
09:21the most important element that is missing in that context would be silence.
09:25So that's my relationship in terms of my practice with silence and has been for quite some time
09:29now.
09:30And it's best to have that silence if you are telling stories that have never been told.
09:35If you are bringing, if you are thinking of bringing up sentiments or if you are trying
09:43to reconnect the reader with the sensation or the experience, I think silence would
09:49be the best part to do it.
09:52Silence is kind of that sensitiser in it, in all of it.
10:01That's my understanding.