Drawing the ‘Lines of Control’ in today’s ‘partitioned’ times

A new group show courtesy Green Cardamom, a London-based nonprofit arts organization, and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art tries to delve into the past and explore the present to expose the seductive simplicity of drawing lines as a substitute for learning how to live with each other.

Living within and across these lines can be a messy, bloody business but also offers a productive space where new nations, identities, languages, and relationships are forged. At its core is ‘Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space’ that investigates the historic upheaval of the 1947 partition of India that spawned the nations of Pakistan and later Bangladesh.

The exhibit is part of an ongoing project initiated in 2005 by Green Cardamom. Co-curated by Hammad Nasar, Iftikhar Dadi, and Ellen Avril, it features more than forty works of video, prints, photographs, paintings, sculpture, and installation by several prominent artists, such as Bani Abidi, Francis Alÿs, Sarnath Banerjee, Farida Batool, Iftikhar Dadi, DAAR, Anita Dube, Sophie Ernst, Gauri Gill, Shilpa Gupta, Zarina Hashmi, Ahsan Jamal, Amar Kanwar, Nalini Malani, Naeem Mohaiemen, Rashid Rana, Raqs Media Collective, Seher Shah, Surekha, Hajra Waheed, and Muhammad Zeeshan among others.

Expanding on the significance of partition in South Asia, ‘Lines of Control’ also addresses physical and psychological borders, trauma, and the reconfiguration of memory in other partitioned areas: North and South Korea, Sudan and South Sudan, Israel and Palestine, Ireland and Northern Ireland, Armenia and its Diaspora, and questions of indigenous sovereignty in the US.

The exhibition explores the products and remainders of partition and borders characteristic of the modern nation-state, and includes the continued impact of colonization, the physical and psychic violence of displacement, dilemmas of identity and belonging, and questions of commemoration.

In essence, ‘Lines of Control’ is not only about commemorating the past, but about current lives in partitioned times. It underlines how art can be a means to explore areas of life where words often fail us, and how blood-filled partitions and their tumultuous aftermaths are ripe for such exploration.