‘Slipping Through The Cracks’ at Latitude 28

A new group exhibition, entitled ‘Slipping Through The Cracks’, takes place at Gallery Latitude 28 located in New Delhi.

The show has been curated by Meera Menezes. It featuring works by several renowned contemporary Indian artists, including Anita Dube, Mithu Sen, Prajjwal Chowdhury, Atul Bhalla, Baptist Coelho, Hemali Bhuta, Jagannath Panda, Archana Hande, Arun Kumar HG, Raqs Media Collective, Shreyas Karle, and Sheba Chhachhi.

As a curatorial note explains, the participating artists through their works make an attempt to investigate the systemic erasure that accompanies a dizzying accumulation of information in an increasingly digitalized and virtual world. It adds, “The exhibition dwells on the mechanisms of this erasure and the deeper ramifications when people and historical events get swallowed up by the cracks of memory and history. While some vignettes of information go viral, enjoying an unimaginable circulation, others languish for want of a digital trace.

What transpires when a Google or Wiki search fails to throw up any mention of bygone moments in history? Do they cease to exist simply because they leave no digital footprint or are no longer referenced and are consequently lost forever to posterity? Ironically however this erasure seems to go hand in hand with the harnessing of new and sophisticated technologies to map the world around us.

These catalog every move of ours using techniques ranging from fingerprinting to biometrics. Are there ways to slip through the cracks of the surveillance systems? All the artists try to examine this phenomenon of leakage and loss in both the virtual and the real worlds. Are there perhaps cracks/fissures/ruptures in the political, social or gender fabric?

They also embark on an investigative journey to see whether these spaces and interstices within the cracks can in turn form sites of resistance or offer possibilities of generating new meaning. Their works traverse these spaces between spaces and tarry in this in-between-ness that the cracks offer.

‘Slipping through the Cracks’ is on view until 22nd February 2012.