18. The Exhibition

On arrival in India, more than five months ago, I first spent a few days in Delhi. I visited several exhibition halls and galleries. Thomas had arranged a meeting with Alka Pande, the Visual Arts Gallery curator at the India Habitat Centre. This Centre is a huge building complex with a beautiful court. Countless NGOs and foundations dealing with habitat and improving living conditions have their offices here, including the Foundation for Universal Responsibility of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Several restaurants, a congress centre, an open air amphitheatre, and the three art galleries under Alka are part of this complex. 
    The Experimental Art Gallery, the smallest of the three spaces, seemed to be the most appropriate for the work I wanted to develop here in India - a work that then had its imaginary existance in my mind. I had not taken anything with me, since I had given myself the task to create this new installation on the spot, with local material. While meeting with Alka, whom I experienced as a very straightforward person, we fixed the dates for the exhibition. I planned to implement it in collaboration with Thomas, with whom she had previously done exhibitions. This gave me the opportunity to work towards a goal while in Varanasi. Without this exhibition, my exchange with India would have been lacking an essential aspect.

Now, five months later, Thomas and I found ourselves in Delhi, with bulging bags and suitcases, containing for the most part the Red Strings Through My Hands installation. In Delhi, a city with 12 million inhabitants, or with 20 if you include the suburbs, everything seemed bigger and more modern to me compared to Varanasi. It was like jumping from the middle ages into the present.
    We first ended up at Connaught Place, a multi-layer circus and city centre, in Mr. Chaudhary's guest house. After I had been unduly disturbed by his cat during the night, we moved closer to Pahar Ganj, into a hotel full of antiques, overlooking a lively plaza with its adjoining Hindu Temple and a vegetable market that gave me the impression of being in an Indian village rather than in a metropolis.

Together with Deneth, a Sri Lankan artist and our local coordinator, I put up my exhibition. I was happy to have her support, although I felt sorry for the reason she was in Delhi. She had wanted to fly from Nepal to London in May to visit her sister, who lived there since many years. It would have been her first trip to Europe, and she had been really excited about it.
Her flight happened to coincide with the end of the civil war in Sri Lanka. She was held back by the Indian police and had to spend a few nights in prison. This turned out to be a misunderstanding: She was found not to be a Tamil Tiger on the run, and she had been arriving from Kathmandu. Nevertheless, they had confiscated her passport and she had been struggling with the legendary Indian bureaucracy to get it back since then.

At the exhibition opening, the Swiss Ambassador unexpectedly welcomed the invitees. He was supposed to be in Bhutan, but his trip had been postponed due to a heavy storm there. And Alka Pande had shortened her trip to Europe, so she was able to address the visitors as well: «I would like to express my gratitude to Nesa, who's acquaintance I made five months ago, to Florence, who accompanied the exhibition from the Swiss Embassy's side, and to Thomas, who brought us all together. In this room, which we named Experimental Art Gallery, we intended from the start to show works that visualise the artistic process. Nesa is one of the rare artists who opens this process to the viewers. Yesterday, she arrived with her bags, in which she had rolled up her textile installation, and it is fascinating for me to see how she has transformed this space with them. As a metaphor, she uses the sari, the standard dress of Indian women, and in her video the process of creating the long strings through tearing, knotting and combining the saris is made visible. Garlands, malas, have a central function in Indian culture. However, she places them in a new context, in which she includes her own experience with the Indian culture in Varanasi, where she visited places that are of great importance for us Indians, such as the Manikarnika Ghat. What Nesa did, was to bring back to us these places in her own language and with her own personal perspective. Bringing together completely different cultures is what is happening on a global level. Her access to our culture is further visible in her drawings and in the small dress, the object on the floor. I had a fascinating conversation with her about this work, which she has developed like an anthropologist. For us, this exhibition is a step on a long journey of exchanges between Switzerland and India. It is not just about chocolate and watches, it is about art, and art is finally an exchange through the heart.»
    For me, this was a beautiful opening reception, with many good conversations, and including Swiss chocolates.

The following day was my 50th birthday, and during the morning a group of young women from the College of Arts visited the installation. They showed strong interested in this work unusual to them. After two hours of exchange, one of them wrote in the red booklet, which I had kept near the entrance for feedback: «Your work for me is very inspiring. But I think we have language problems. You don’t know Hindi and I don’t know much English. But I like your work and I like you.» This was a wonderful birthday gift for me. I will include the red booklet in next year's exhibition in Switzerland, in order to tie the two cultures together on this level as well.
    Alka had organised a birthday party for me at her home, with a sumptuous lunch buffet in her garden, with birthday cake and candles and Happy Birthday. For me, she radiates the quality of an archetypal mother figure that is common to all cultures. And with this quality, she also leads her galleries, comprising her work and team as an extended family. I consider it a privilege to be able to work with women like her. Behind her stand women like Krishna and Suprabha, who deal with the many details, which are so important in the end.
    The Swiss Ambassador, Mr. Welti, invited Thomas and me to his residence in the Embassy. We drank a glass of wine in the amazing park and listened to its inhabitants. Every evening, hundreds of birds sing and twitter on the trees, until they fall silent almost simultaneously. He told us that every now and then, he receives a visit from the peacock who lives in this garden. I like this image: The ambassador, visited by an ambassador of animals, parading silently in his office to mark the presence of animals and nature in this country. As artists we have to fight for our place in a similar manner. However, as Mr. Welti explains, he is usually absorbed in economic issues, since India is a huge market for Swiss enterprises. Even though it is just a third of the Indian population that participates in this market, it comprises 400 million people. Opening an art exhibition is hence an exception in his daily work, but nevertheless we appreciated his participation.

During the following days, the exhibition remained well visited, and during my hours of presence I had many interesting conversations. The writer Kuldeep Singh, after having spent a long time in the exhibition hall, left a note in my red booklet: «Red strings through my hands is a beautiful observation and perception, that allows the viewer a deep insight into the past, present and future of the Indian world. To be a human in this world means to be the world, and life is what we, in a permanent boundless movement, make of it. In its eternal depth, life unfolds in all four directions and can be challenged from any angle. In his self expression, a human being is eventually invincible.»
    Kush, a young woman who visited the exhibition several times, translated it for me. Deneth added an echo to the Hindi statement in her native Singhalese, coming yet from another world: «You are demonstrating at a very deep level the differing lives of women in India. When I first saw your long red strings, they reminded me of Rapunzel's fairy tale. Indian women to me often appear imprisoned, and they remind me of this story.»

Imprisoned and expelled was how Sunitha appeared to me, a woman I was supposed to meet in Delhi on behalf of our common Swiss friend Maya. After marrying against her parent's will, she and her husband had fled to Switzerland, where they were not accepted as refugees. Back in Delhi, they moved in with his family and had two children. She and her children were often beaten by him. She had left him a few weeks earlier, and her own parents had refused to take her back. All these years since her Swiss trip, she had kept in touch with Maya, who had asked me to hand over some money to her for a new start, so she would not have to live on the streets. I called her and asked her to visit the Habitat Centre during the weekend. When she arrived with her two children, she made a very closed-up and insecure impression on me. I felt that as a single mother, she would need further support. The violence, to which she had been exposed during the past years, had left its traces on her. She had been locked up in her husband's family home. She hardly knew this city in which she grew up and lives in, and whenever she had some money, she was being cheated, as she explained to me. I urged her to contact an NGO who takes care of abandoned women. Together with other women she would have to learn to survive. Money alone would not really transform her condition. As a single mother, she would have to fight hard. In this society, it is still the family that carries the responsibility for all its members, and to be an outcast in India, even in Delhi, means complete isolation.

In my red booklet, I found another comment by a visitor: «It is good to see a different medium and people reacting on the Indian women. We need to be recognised and helped.» A work of art can open a world, can bring something hidden into the open. I was happy to see that Indian women understood my language