The Art of Grief, Violence, Death and a Genocide
Menu
हिंदी తెలుగు اردو
Home Politics Economy World Security Law Science Society Culture Editor's Pick Opinion
Support independent journalism. Donate Now
Top Stories
The Art of Grief, Violence, Death and a Genocide
Pariplab Chakraborty
14 minutes ago
Curated by Amit Mukhopadhyay and organised by SAHMAT, 'The Body Called Palestine' is an ongoing exhibition at Jawahar Bhawan, New Delhi. It features digital prints of Palestinian artists' works along with works from artists worldwide in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Sliman Mansour's work at the exhibition 'The Body Called Palestine'. Photo: Pariplab Chakraborty.
Real journalism holds power accountable
Since 2015, The Wire has done just that.
But we can continue only with your support.
Contribute now
'Here, where the hills slope before the sunset and the chasm of time
near gardens whose shades have been cast aside
we do what prisoners do
we do what the jobless do
we sow hope…'
– Mahmoud Darwish, A State of Siege, 2002
Palestinian art, by existing, challenges the very foundation of Israeli-settler colonialism. Every occupation tries to destroy the idea of the people they occupy and in order to accomplish that, it inflicts violence on the occupied bodies. It tries to obliterate memories, truths and traces of genocidal violence. But can it omit the idea of the people resisting the occupation and defending their own land?
Curated by Amit Mukhopadhyay and organised by SAHMAT, 'The Body Called Palestine' is an ongoing exhibition at Jawahar Bhawan, New Delhi. It features digital prints of Palestinian artists' works along with works from artists worldwide in solidarity with the Palestinian people. Primarily, the exhibition seeks to remember. It is an attempt to challenge our 'monocular vision' of seeing and to engage with a new artistic language that stems from Palestinian artists across fields who are living under and resisting a genocidal regime.
'The Body Called Palestine' showcases works of Palestinian artists and their expressions of living under a never ending system of occupation, ethnic cleansing, everyday violence and utter dehumanisation. It witnesses alienation, loss, grief, and anger.
Malak Mattar, a young Palestinian artist, grew up in the Gaza strip witnessing occupation and military siege. She had created a series of monochrome and grayscale drawings and paintings – documenting the genocide in her homeland – during a residency programme. She later combined all of those images into this monumental grayscale painting titled 'No Words… (For Gaza)'. This work explicitly tells the horrors and devastation of occupation and a vicious cycle of displacement and ethnic cleansing of the people of Palestine.
While working on this painting she said 'It needs to be completely horrific,' 'otherwise it will not accurately reflect the genocide.'
Malak Mattar's 'No Words…(For Gaza)'. Photo: Pariplab Chakraborty.
Malak Mattar's art. Photo: Pariplab Chakraborty.
Maisara Baroud is a Palestinian artist from Gaza city. As a witness, his works evoke a sense of the unfathomable and the familiar, both. It is like a never-ending blur between the blacks and whites, like a nauseating fever – akin to the experience of a relentless cycle of atrocities.
'He consistently highlights topics such as war, immigration, political prisoners, illegal arrests, and occupation. Baroud's works reflect dramatic and tragic scenes, dominated by grief, death, violence, peace, hope, and freedom. His art mirrors how life is intertwined with a fresh, continuous scent of death that never seems to fade.' the artist's statement reads.
Maisara Baroud's 'The Artistic Diary of Maisara Baroud'. Photo: Pariplab Chakraborty.
The artworks show resilient acts of recording, embedded in personal and political experiences, ensuring that the grand sweep of historical injustice and the records of deafening silence from those in power are not erased.
Digital prints of noted Palestinian artist and art historian Vera Tamari's works are also on display in the exhibition. Vera was only three years old during the first Nakba in 1948. She grew up seeing a perpetual state of occupation, war and violence inflicted upon the Palestinian lives. Her vast body of ceramic, sculpture and installation works intensively talk about seeing the Palestinian reality up front and with its innumerable layers of memories, the undaunting resilience Palestinian identity and its cultural heritage.
Vera Tamari's 'Palestinian Women at Work' (ceramic relief). Photo: Pariplab Chakraborty.
The exhibition also featured an excerpt of a presentation by Vera Tamari along with the digital prints of her works. Presented originally in a conference titled 'Art and War', organised by the Goethe Institute in Ramallah, in November 2004, it goes like this:
Going for a Ride?
(Installation, 2002)
Cars are powerful icons in our society. Other than being urban household commodities, cars have become a metaphor of daily life. These inanimate objects even carry an emotional significance for most people. Not for me; I never owned a car nor learnt to drive one, but seeing my friend Liza's Volkswagen Beetle as I peeked from behind the shutters of my window one morning made me shudder.
That quaint red car in which we often rode, was visibly smashed. It was lying on its hood wheels up, almost like a dead real beetle.
In Going for a Ride? those inanimate objects, symbols of well-being, status, and freedom have in an act of vindictive violence, perpetrated by the Israeli military tanks in the 2002 invasion of Ramallah, taken on a new reality. They metamorphosed from once practical objects to become subjects of vengeful voodooism. Do we hurt the Palestinians more by destroying their cherished personal belongings?
My idea in making this installation was not to merely to fashion junk as an art form or an anti-gesture as advocated by Nouveau Realiste or Dada artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Cesare in their crashed car compositions. Both artists challenged the conventional notion of art as an aesthetic exercise. I simply wanted to make a statement about how a mundane logical reality becomes totally illogical through the violence of the war machine. It is hard to see my installation of smashed cars as not carrying a political meaning. Seven hundred private and public cars were smashed in the military incursion of Ramallah alone. I wanted to give those cars a voice – an ironic reflection on the unnecessary nature of violence whose authors were the Israeli occupation forces. This act of destruction became like action art disturbing the status quo of matters.
The soldiers in this case have become the artist creators.
The soldiers the viewers.
The soldiers as re-creators.
The installation piece kept changing.
It had a new energy each time – more violent than the previous one.
I was merely the curator.
Basma Al Sharif's work. Photo: Pariplab Chakraborty.
Basma Alsharif is an artist and filmmaker of Palestine heritage. A series of Basma's six photographs are on display in this exhibition. Her works explore the cyclical political histories and confront the 'legacy of colonisation with satire, doubt and hope'.
SAHMAT's continued solidarity with the Palestinian people finds a vivid expression in this exhibition, where, as the curator articulates 'the response to the Palestine question across the world has become a unifying force that creates new solidarities as an antidote to the atomising effects of a military-industrial complex'.
'The Body Called Palestine' aims to remember the history and presence of Israeli settler colonialism and its genocidal military offence as it is. This is valuable at a time when the larger mediascape peddles false narratives without any accountability and often erects a smokescreen of half-truths and lies, that help those in power obfuscate historical facts and cultivate public apathy.
Aban Raza, a Delhi-based artist who also co-curated an art exhibition in solidarity with Palestine last year titled 'Fida-e-Filistine' and organised by SAHMAT, says, 'This exhibition is a testament to artists' solidarity from around the world with the Palestinian struggle and our collective resistance, despite all odds and silencing.'
Labani Jangi's 'Even after a genocide, the rising moon doesn't burn our eyes'. Photo: Pariplab Chakraborty.
This watercolour painting by artist and scholar Labani Jangi from Nadia, West Bengal, explores the difference in her perception of the moon between her childhood and the present, where there's a full scale massacre of Palestinian lives happening in every passing day.
'The moon that once used to bring Eid, festivals or fantastic stories from Naani now stands still – in silence like a representative of those who can afford to dwell in apathy. Those who remain silent even after seeing a genocide in front of their eyes – drenched in the propagandas of fascist regimes,' says Labani.
The exhibition is on view until May 31, from 9.30 am to 7 pm at Jawahar Bhawan, New Delhi.
Make a contribution to Independent Journalism
Related News
Why Israel's New Aid Delivery System for Gaza Is Sparking Outrage
Concerns Expressed Over Gaza Situation, Modi Government Accused of 'Assisting Genocide'
'This Genocide Implicates Us All': 380 Writers, Organisations Call on Israel to Cease Fire in Gaza
Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza: Families Forced to the Shore Amid Escalating Conflict
For Your Own Sake, Please Care for Palestine
From Colonial Loot to Cultural Genocide at the British Museum
What the 'Cauliflower' in BJP Karnataka's X Post Means
Judge's Order Frees Indian Scholar Detained in US Over Support for Palestine
'We've Killed So Many Children – It's Hard to Argue with That': Tel Aviv Protesters in Silent Vigil
About Us
Contact Us
Support Us
© Copyright. All Rights Reserved.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Wire
8 hours ago
- The Wire
‘Sister Midnight' Is a Feel-Bad Fable That Liberates Radhika Apte From Bollywood
A still from Sister Midnight. Screengrab from video. Real journalism holds power accountable Since 2015, The Wire has done just that. But we can continue only with your support. Contribute Now Even though it is widely known, I don't think enough gets written about how much of a nightmare it is to watch a film in its 'purest' form in India. One can overlook the overzealous censors that infantilise the audience with humongous smoking warnings, even for films rated 'A', desecrating the work of any self-respecting filmmaker. Along with that, most ambitious films play in sparsely-populated theatres. The screening for Karan Kandhari's Sister Midnight that I attended in Bengaluru had about a dozen audience members. I have a feeling I would've enjoyed the film more if I'd seen it in a packed theatre because it has many visual gags, and most of them are spot on. Also, muted cuss words can feel like sensory speed bumps even if one can decipher them by reading the lip movement. I wondered how the British-Indian director reacted to the alterations? But hey, at least the film released, unlike Sandhya Suri's Santosh (2024). A still from Sister Midnight. Screengrab from video. Kandhari's film, also produced in the UK, has the irreverence and an energy that no Bollywood film could muster in 2025 (or a film like this couldn't get funding in India right now). Intent on feel-good fables on newly married couples, where the demure bride discovers her agency in the finale (like say, Laapataa Ladies or Mrs), Kandhari's film could be labelled a feel-bad fable. Offering Radhika Apte the license to be at her most unhinged, especially after being repeatedly let-down by most films and directors, in one clean stroke, Kandhari liberates her from Bollywood. This might be the rare film where the 39-year-old actor's bravery is reciprocated. Uma (Apte) and Gopal (Ashok Pathak) are a newly-married couple navigating the initial awkwardness of an arranged marriage. The first time we see them, she's concerned about living in a city like Mumbai, while he's asleep. They're dumped in a one-room chawl in one of those back alleys in Bandra/Khar – ones that bustle with hawkers, autorickshaws in the mornings, and become dead silent at night. Gopal isn't the most expressive – on his first day after their marriage, he leaves for work without saying a word. To make matters worse, he comes back home drunk at night, not bothered about how Uma spent the day in this fully alien environment. A still from Sister Midnight. Screengrab from video. But it's not just him who is socially not equipped to play the part of 'husband'. If anything, Uma looks even more troubled by this life sentence of domesticity. She can't fathom her responsibility as a wife. Torn between understanding her 'duty' of providing the carnal pleasures of marriage, and fully aware of how completely ill-prepared she is to play the role of a homemaker, Uma suffocates, and then takes defiant strides to find her happiness. The first hour of Kandhari's film is a sensational study of arranged marriages and their deeply patriarchal nature, as much as about a life in an unforgiving metropolis like Mumbai. Gopal and Uma's chawl never feels like a set; one can almost smell the damp air, feel the heat trapped from the asbestos roofing and taste the humidity. What I found strained to believe in the film is how it shows Uma walking up and down from Khar to Fort everyday, for a job she takes up in a shipping company as a late-night janitor. Chhaya Kadam – India's resident character actor to showcase a middle-aged woman doling out advice to wet-around-their-ears women – plays Sheetal, the neighbour on the other side of a thin ply that separates her home from Uma and Gopal's. Kadam's wry, matter-of-fact delivery deepens the enigma of Uma's sense of displacement in Mumbai. Smita Tambe, playing Uma's nosy neighbour Reshma, is a delight. She's at the receiving end of Uma's best, most crude line, which is unfortunately muted in the version playing in Indian theatres. A still from Sister Midnight. Screengrab from video. I also liked the dynamic Apte and Pathak share on-screen. Uma's profane mouth and utter disregard for household work is balanced by Gopal's quiet fragility. His ignorance is not entirely intentional, some of it is also social awkwardness. He never asks her where she's coming from, holding a bucket and a mop, even though she can't clean their house. He eats out of polythene bags of rice and dal, too polite to confront Uma about why she hasn't cooked him a meal. Even though Uma is the author-backed role in the film, Pathak makes Gopal this luminous being, aware of his less-than-impressive face, so he tries to compensate with his soft, passive presence – never going on to become an obstacle in the path of his abrasive wife. As Uma, Apte delivers a physical performance for the ages. Saying the darndest of things, while shedding every last inch of vanity (from scratching her bum to projectile vomiting multiple times) – she never tries to lessen the blow of Uma as an anti-heroine. The best compliment I can think of paying Apte and Kandhari is how they never try to mine sympathy for Uma, and yet they also never let her become sub-human (even when the film dives deep into the pit of genre). It's in the second hour, and the longer Kandhari commits to the absurdity of his chosen genre, that the film begins to seem clueless about where it's headed. The whimsicality of the first hour – especially Paul Banks' score that features classical rock, grunge, blues, wonderfully at odds with bustling Mumbai compositions and its arid outskirts – becomes less novel towards the end. Especially, once we realise Kandhari hasn't quite figured out a way to make it land. The reflective commentary around Uma-Gopal's dysfunctional marriage – and how some people are simply not cut-out for 'conjugal bliss' – doesn't reach the heights I imagined; the messaging instead becomes garbled. Apte still swings for the fences till the last scene, but the film (with some dodgy VFX) starts to look less than what was initially promised. As it concludes, it's impossible to not admire the storm that is Karan Kandhari's Sister Midnight – even if it leaves behind a whole lot of wreckage in its wake. Such beautiful wreckage. *Sister Midnight is playing in theatres The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
The Hindu
a day ago
- The Hindu
Norway Chess 2025: World Champion Gukesh Beats Carlsen in Shocking First Classical Victory
Published : Jun 03, 2025 17:44 IST - 7 MINS READ On December 12, 2024, 18-year-old Gukesh Dommaraju created history by becoming the youngest-ever world chess champion. The teenage chess wizard from Chennai had beaten a star-studded line-up in the Candidates Tournament, including Super GMs (Grandmaster) like Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Alireza Firouzja, and others, before finally defeating the reigning world champion Ding Liren from China. But the crown did not rest easy on the young king's head. Even though he was the world champion, the long shadow of Magnus Carlsen hung over his achievement. Carlsen, universally acknowledged as one of the greatest players of all time (if not the greatest), had voluntarily given up his title in 2023, undefeated; and Gukesh had never beaten him in the classical format of the game. The new champion himself was painfully aware of the fact that though he may be the world champion he was not the best player in the world: 'Becoming the world champion does not mean I am the best player; obviously that is Magnus... That will help me keep doing the right things, working hard, and trying to reach the level of greatness that Magnus has achieved,' he had said soon after his coronation. Nearly six months later, on June 1, Gukesh could finally shrug off the burden of expectation on his young shoulders when he defeated Carlsen for the first time ever in the classical format in the prestigious Norway Chess tournament. It was his most significant win since becoming champion as it served to silence his detractors, destroy whatever seeds of doubt that may have crept into his mind, and boost his confidence by breaking what appeared to be a jinx. Norway Chess was the first time the two met across the board since Gukesh became champion, and it was one of the most highly-anticipated occasions not just in chess but in the whole sports fraternity. 'You come at the king, you better not miss' For Carlsen, it was time for a reality check. It was not just a tear in his cloak of invincibility, but also something that wiped the smirk of smug superiority that came with the record of never being beaten by the world champion in the classical format. In their first match of the Norway Chess on May 27, the world number one ground down the world champion in a long-drawn 55-move battle that appeared to be heading for a draw. A single blunder by Gukesh in his strategy of attacking Carlsen's king turned the tables in the latter's favour. After the match, Carlsen posted on social media a quote from the popular television series 'The Wire': 'YOU COME AT THE KING, YOU BEST NOT MISS.' The dual meaning in the polysemous phrase was not lost on anyone. On the one hand it could be interpreted as a comment on Gukesh's play at Magnus's king on the board; but on the other hand, it could also be perceived as a statement asserting who the real king of chess was. Also Read | Gukesh Dommaraju: The boy king of chess Gukesh gave his answer in their second match on June 1 in a most dramatic fashion. In all appearances, the world champion seemed to be heading for another certain defeat. Carlsen was outplaying him from early on, and Gukesh seemed to be struggling just to survive and remain in the game. With the time pressure on, Magnus blundered with the knight in the 52nd move, and Gukesh swooped upon the advantage and held on. Interestingly, the outcomes of both their first and second matches were hinged on a single mistake during the time scramble. The most common time control in classical chess involves an increment of 30 seconds from the 41st move onward; however, the Norway Chess tournament rules allow for only 10 seconds increment, which often results in a chaotic scramble in the end game. Carlsen made his disappointment very evident. He banged his fist hard on the table, causing several of the pieces to fall and startling Gukesh. He immediately apologised, shook hands with his opponent, and left the room, giving the victor a pat on the back on his way out. Gukesh himself was stunned by the victory. He stood for a while as though in shock; when the moment sank in, he returned to the table and, as is his custom in victory or defeat, set up the pieces on the chess board. Magnus's thump on the table upon defeat reverberated across the world. Gukesh never needed to prove whether he was a worthy champion or not. But this victory over Magnus has been a momentous event in the young champion's career as it silenced the doubting Thomases who had been raising the question of whether Gukesh was 'deserving' of the world chess crown. Victory against the odds The second game with Carlsen was a close call for Gukesh. His dogged defending ultimately saw him through, but it was not the kind of victory he wanted. 'I'm still kind of shaking after that game… There wasn't much I could do. It was just clearly lost [his position]. I was just trying to make moves that were tricky for him, and luckily, he got into a time scramble… 99 times out of 100 I would lose… just a lucky day… [It was my] first classical win against Carlsen. Not the way I wanted it to be, but I'll take it,' he said. Carlsen, too, felt it was a game he should have won, but for the fight put up by Gukesh. 'On a normal day, of course, I win that game, but what he [Gukesh] does well is that he really fights, and he was there to take his chance, and he deserves credit for that,' he said. Also Read | The champion on his conquests Over the past few years, Carlsen has made it clear that he has lost interest in the classical format of chess, and that is one of the reasons why he abdicated his title in 2023. In fact, the man who has been the world number one since 2013, who has achieved the highest ELO rating in the history of the game (2880), and has the longest unbeaten streak in classical chess at the topmost level (125 games), hardly plays the classical format these days. However, his absence from the format has not affected his winning rate against other top players on those occasions when he does play, which makes Gukesh's victory all the more creditable. Speaking on Gukesh's win over Carlsen, veteran Grandmaster Dibyendu Barua told Frontline, 'This was a victory that Gukesh needed very much. This will not just boost his confidence for the rest of the tournament, but also for his games in the coming days. Defeating the world's best is an important accomplishment; and Carlsen is in a much higher and stronger position than the rest of the players—something Gukesh himself had acknowledged after he became world champion.' Barua also feels that the win was a reaffirmation of Gukesh's status as world champion. 'Many people did not give him his due credit, claiming that without Carlsen, the world championship had no real prestige. Gukesh most definitely had the desire to prove himself by defeating Carlsen in the classical format. Moreover, winning from a lost position will make him more confident in their next encounters. Now his next challenge is to become the world number one. If he continues to play with this kind of consistency, he will reach that position in a few years,' said Barua, who is India's second Grandmaster after former world champion Viswanathan Anand. Interestingly, another legend of the game faced a similar problem after becoming world champion. In 1975, Anatoly Karpov became the undisputed world champion by default, when the mercurial Bobby Fischer refused to defend his title which he had won from Boris Spassky in 1972. Though one of the strongest players at that time, Karpov nevertheless had to prove that he was a deserving champion, and in the process became the most dominant player in the world for the next 10 years. Gukesh, too, has proved himself to be a worthy champion, defeating some of the biggest names in chess in the past five months. But winning against Carlsen may well set him on the path to the next level of his chess career. In fact, after defeating the world number one in the sixth round, Gukesh beat India's number one, Arjun Erigaisi, in the seventh round. This, too, was Gukesh's first win against Erigaisi in the classical format.
Time of India
3 days ago
- Time of India
Imagine Dragons waves Palestinian flag and shows off LGBTQ-themed guitar at the Milan concert; gains mixed reaction from the internet
Imagine Dragons, the popular American pop band, has sparked controversy after the lead singer kissed a Palestinian flag during the concert on May 27 in Milan, which was part of their Loom tour. What happened with Imagine Dragons in Milan? Dan Reynolds, donning a pair of black pants, waved the Palestinian flag and draped himself with it at the end of the concert as the band addressed the audience. As the band bowed down, Dan went back to the centre stage, grabbed the flag off his shoulder, and threw it after kissing the quadri-coloured flag. However, the gestures quickly grabbed the attention of the internet, gaining mixed reactions. Some of the users perceived the gesture as a means of solidarity, where they supported him, while others condemned the act, citing that Dan supports terrorism. What was the internet's reaction? One user stated on X, 'Imagine Dragons" band ended their concert by waving the Palestinian flag, a flag that represents murdering babies and r–ing women. They're openly showing solidarity with TERRORISTS. Unbelievable.' While another user stated, 'ok even though they make terrible music (that ironically feels israeli on a spiritual level) I'll hand it to imagine dragons this one time' A third wrote, 'Very Nice to See More People Showing Support The Imagine Dragons Band Ended Their Concert by Waving the Palestinian Flag.' A LGBTQ-themed guitar ... Along with the Palestinian flag, the bass player of Imagine Dragons proudly showed off his transgender flag-themed guitar. One user stated, 'I rted this video before but didn't see the trans guitar too im gonna stream imagine dragons they deserve it I think.' While another user pointed out, 'This video proves how truly stupid celebrities are. You've got the imagine dragon guy with a Palestine flag and some other dude with a trans flag guitar, in complete ignorance that trans people would be slaughtered mercilessly there. Amazing.' Check out our list of the latest Hindi , English , Tamil , Telugu , Malayalam , and Kannada movies . Don't miss our picks for the best Hindi movies , best Tamil movies, and best Telugu films .
