Anish Kapoor's Gangnam for Freedom

                 Gangnam for Freedom - Anish Kapoor and Friends 

The British sculptor Anish Kapoor and a group of his human rights oriented friends have released a new video in partnership with Amnesty International and PEN International to bring attention to the ongoing persecution of artists and writers across the globe from China to Russia who have been harassed and imprisoned because of their work. Taking up where Ai Wei Wei's recent Gangnam Style video left off, Kapoor's own Gangnam Style romp combines symbols of imprisonment and torture with the names of many who have been persecuted in their artistic strivings for freedom. Please watch, visit the links, and find out what you can do to help shed light on this growing problem of censorship and oppression.

As an emigré from India to the United Kingdom, Anish Kapoor has often been concerned with the ideas of freedom and dislocation in his artwork. I have posted a few examples below that provide a brief glimpse into his artistic practice. For me, Anish Kapoor is one of the most important and visionary artists working today.

Anish Kapoor.
Dismemberment Site 1
Mild Steel Tube and Tensioned Fabric 2009
Gibbs Farm, Kaipara Harbour, New Zealand
photos courtesy  Gibbs Farm

 In North America, his best-known creation, Cloud Gate, is the centerpiece of Chicago’s Millennium Park:

Anish Kapoor
Cloud Gate
Stainless Steel 2004-2006
Millenium Park, Chicago, Illinois
Photos by Gregg Chadwick

Anish Kapoor, Hole, 1988; sculpture; fiberglass and pigment, 84 in. x 84 in. x 102 in. (213.36 cm x 213.36 cm x 259.08 cm); Collection SFMOMA, Gift of Mrs. Milo Gates; © Anish Kapoor

Source: http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/collection/artwork/169##ixzz2CtD7h8ex
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

More At: 

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/gao

Write Against Impunity
http://www.pen-international.org/write-against-impunity-the-campaign/
http://www.daytoendimpunity.org

Gibbs Farm

Thanks to:
Proudfoot http://www.proudfoot.tv
Akram Khan http://www.akramkhancompany.net/

A Poem for Bombay (Mumbai) from Adil Jussawalla

Sea Breeze, Bombay

by Adil Jussawalla

Partition's people stitched
Shrouds from a flag, gentlemen scissored Sind.
An opened people, fraying across the cut
country reknotted themselves on this island.

Surrogate city of banks,
Brokering and bays, refugees' harbour and port,
Gatherer of ends whose brick beginnings work
Loose like a skin, spotting the coast,

Restore us to fire. New refugees,
Wearing blood-red wool in the worst heat,
come from Tibet, scanning the sea from the north,
Dazed, holes in their cracked feet.

Restore us to fire. Still,
Communities tear and re-form; and still, a breeze,
Cooling our garrulous evenings, investigates nothing,
Ruffles no tempers, uncovers no root,

And settles no one adrift of the mainland's histories.

(From the Oxford Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry)

When tragedy strikes, art has the power to connect. While searching my files for artistic connections to the events in Mumbai, I found the thoughts and writings of Amardeep Singh, Assistant Professor of English at Lehigh University, to be of great importance. Amardeep Singh led me to the work of Adil Jussawalla whose thoughts from a 1978 interview with Peter Nazareth still ring true:

Jussawalla was asked about the responsibility of the writer in times of crisis. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I think each writer will deal with the crisis in his own way . . . Maybe I see writing as an activity, at least for me personally, as linked up with a whole life, a whole sense of time. Indian writers do have a different sense of time in relation to their own work than the writers in the States, in England and in France, which means that we are bound to have a different attitude even to crisis . . . Am I being fatalistic if I say that for Indians, the crisis is perpetual?”

Gregg Chadwick
Walled Garden
48"x48" oil on linen 2008

As a global community, it is our duty to mourn with the families of those who were lost and also, as some will seek vengeance, to remind them that, as Gandhi taught, only love and understanding will eventually break the cycle of prejudice, hatred, and violence. It is my hope that these desperate and bloody acts in Mumbai will actually bring the people of India and Pakistan together in mourning and thus create a spirit of cooperation to battle a common enemy which preys on both states. Measured, calm, rational responses to the current chaos will help stabilize the region and the globe.

More at:
Amardeep Singh
Poetry International on Adil Jussawalla
Gandhi An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth