There is always a heavy weight to thoughts and news about and from Kashmir. There is always an undercurrent of sorrow and severe conflicts in it. That undercurrent is the hallmark of the artworks of the Kashmiri artist Moonis Ahmad Shah, displayed at the Kochi Muziris Biennale. Moreover, Moonis Ahmad Shah’s world of art also draws our attention to the various forms of violence that have occurred, and continue to happen, in Kashmir over different periods of time.
It can be said that the disappearance of people is a phenomenon that exists in places with ethnic conflicts, border clashes, and where the presence of the military is a decisive force. In conflict-ridden environments that have endured for decades and are therefore suspicious, this adds a layer of mystery, creating a gothic nature where most instances of disappearance occur. Looking at this issue in the context of South Asia, Jammu and Kashmir has become a place that can be highlighted to the Indian populace. The changes that have occurred over the last four to five decades have turned that valley into a valley of the unseen. Kashmir, along with its people, is a territory pressed in the fist of power, both as a disputed region and otherwise, between two countries.
The backdrop of disappearances is not something exclusive to Kashmir in South Asia. The period during and after the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka is also an era marked by such disappearances. In South American countries, disappearances during times of political instability are a major political issue. Indeed, a missing object—whether it is a person, an animal, or other things—often reminds people more of its presence than its actual absence does. The absent has a greater visibility than what is present.
Shifa Haq’s (2021) book, ‘In Search of Return: Mourning the Disappearances in Kashmir’, is an introduction to the laments of people who have disappeared from the Kashmir Valley at various times. Shifa Haq states, ‘We struggle to find words or adequate expressions of what loss means.’ The works of Moonis Ahmad Shah, a Kashmiri artist, demonstrate just how true this is. In other words, these works become an introduction not to pain, but to disappearances that engulf the pain, and beyond that, they redefine the meaning of pain. The disappearances of people must be witnessed as a form of violence that happens extremely silently amidst various destabilised conditions of contemporary times. Here lie the disappeared, the reasons behind them, and the countless traps behind those reasons that never dry up. Disappearances that are referred to as the perspective of the authorities, or power, regarding governments and the voices against them. Behind those who disappeared, there are stories. Those stories are filled with episodes of oppression. Each disappearance is either completed or left unresolved, leaving mysteries behind those stories.
The region of Kashmir has a complex formation history, marked by the intertwining of Hindu-Brahmanic, Buddhist, and Sufi-Islamic influences. It is within this context that subsequent political consciousness developed. Before and after independence, the events there reflect various types of identity issues imposed, to some extent, on the Kashmiri people, which have been formed through both conflict and compromise with the political situations of different eras. But the crucial question is: how can these political events be transformed into art? The answer to that question can be seen in Moonis Ahmad Shah’s installation. The highly offensive and inhumane act of ‘disappearance’ happened in continuation of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (Section 4) [AFSPA], a law that granted special powers and privileges to the police and military in Kashmir. Under this law, the army could take anyone into custody at any time, without a warrant, merely on suspicion of wrongdoing. It was under this law that most of the so-called ‘disappearances’ actually occurred.
Moonis’s art practices encompass installation, video, sound, sculpture, and programming. Moonis treats and expands his artistic worlds as a vast realm of ideas, allowing a subject to be seen and understood in multiple ways. By intertwining the lives of those who died at different times in Kashmir with the lives of the living, his artistic creations disrupt conventional perspectives, serving as a political act: a reflection on the afterlife of the deceased, the lives of the living, and power questioned from its own limits. The forgotten dead are returning, carrying information about the dark shadows of power that led to their deaths. They bear witness to themselves as those who were destined to sink into oblivion. They are the phantoms of our contemporary political life, crushed and entangled within the heavenly workings of power. Their cries are of a nature that can never return. They are the ones turning Moonis’s world of art into a field of silent protests.
This artwork presents a political challenge. This artwork is a struggle of memory against oblivion. Beyond the times when political leadership and authority are subdued, it depicts, through imaginative post-human worlds and the challenges they present, knowledge and technology controlled by colonial powers. These are the subjects of Shai’s artistic worlds, and through them, new worlds are revealed, creating an alternate universe as well. However, beyond these worlds, in the worlds of those who have disappeared due to political reasons, when we remember them, political instabilities become evident. Memories of them are themselves revolts against those political conditions. In this way, memory is not merely a tool against forgetting; it is an instrument beyond memory itself. What can be seen here is a person who observes the resistances against power, the counter-worlds, with hope. All sorts of ‘disappearances’ in Kashmir happen due to the lust for power. In other words, it is the fear of the administration or the excessive exercise of power that drives each ‘disappearance’ politically—hence remembering the disappeared becomes an act of resistance against power. This is where the relevance of Shai’s artistic creation comes in. The repression exercised by the administration in Kashmir occurs on multiple levels; it is not just about disappearances. It also includes gang rapes, obstacles to communication, and many other things. Beyond these moments, there are the acts of lying and functioning within worlds of falsehood, where all of this is interwoven.
When it comes to Kashmir, at the very least, the typewriter in Shah’s artwork about Kashmir emerges as a form of power. The typewriter in the hands of those in power can disrupt the lives of an entire region and its inhabitants. With a file, one could condemn a person to death by hanging or rape all the women in an area. Regardless of what actually happens, the crucial point is what those in power write in the files. It is in files filled with lies that the falsehoods of power operate. Power and administration are deeply intertwined in modern-day society. Here, power refers to the ability to influence or command, and administration is the system of management that utilises this power to implement policies, manage resources, and achieve organisational goals, especially within government.
Here, in the work of art, the typewriter endlessly types the names of people who have disappeared from the valley of Kashmir. It also raises questions about simple things, like how even a mere typewriter, when combined with authority, comes to embody the fear and awe produced by a typewriter that is endlessly typed on and perfectly programmed, becoming a symbol of a fearful era. The names of the missing people are typed on a typewriter without paper. That is, this typing is not an official record; instead, it is a rebellion against official records. Here, not even the artist is supposed to make anyone aware. Those who see these artworks do not necessarily have to see the names of the missing from Kashmir. In that way, the artist points out that it doesn’t matter for specific names. Beyond the names, the issue lies in the impact that the construction of an imagined community of the missing has on those who are alive.
These are names that even the people of Kashmir might perhaps have forgotten, names that only the families of the disappeared or sometimes their living mothers might remember, typed on that typewriter; only its sound can be heard, and it silently tells the artist that you don’t need to know the names, that what is being typed are your own names. The typewriter serves as a reminder of the past. In the sense of a material life, the disappeared are more alive than the living. Some questions by Shifa Haq resonate as one goes through Shah’s artistic creations. For example, when Shifa Haq asks, ‘One may ask what symbols and representations might appear in cultures ravaged by violence and repetitious unthinkable anxiety?’ it is not literally just about the disappeared, but also about the rituals that created, how they are remembered, and the unthinkable thoughts that arise from them.
Here, the object, which is obviously without emotion is portrays the names of people who have disappeared from the context. Here, the question of time arises. The concept of time becomes unconventional here. People are limited to one entry in the administrative order. The government, often portrayed as inhumane, is represented here through this typewriter. A human being which embodies stories, ethnicity, culture, time, and history is limited and subverted forever into the oblivion of memory or into an administrative human language. ‘Exposed to excessive pain, the mind-body duality ceases to host the certainty of painful experience, exposing the limit of language to situate it’ — this is the truth. It is here that Shah brings the entire suffering of the people of Kashmir into a typewriter. Who can surpass this typewriter? Who can ignore it? Who can forget Kashmir? Who can forget the troubled past of its people, its continuing present, and the terrifying future that awaits?
The typewriter, which is placed as a free object, is the representation of power and administration together, and the artist tries to portray how a mere object can stand together with the power to destroy innocent lives, all under the pretext of administration or democracy. This is not a typewriter (This is not a pipe – Foucault). It is a work of art that combines various elements. One layer opens up to history, and another layer reveals the terror of authority. Yet another layer reveals the barbarity of the military. So, no matter which way you look at it, it transforms from a typewriter into a work of art, and the names typed on it, even if they are not visible, become a gateway and a threshold to a particular era.
Krispin Joseph PX, a poet and journalist, completed an MFA in art history and visual studies at the University of Hyderabad and an MA in sociology and cultural anthropology from the Central European University, Vienna.
