Ram Bali’s installation Global Free Gift addresses the irony of the capitalist commoditization of tragedy. The corporate media’s market strategy to sensationalize violence in return makes it repetitive and decontexualized by reducing it to a palpable object devoid of any value except the commercial. The corridor was transformed into a graveyard with small white graves cast in plaster and gift-wrapped in red ribbon. Set in a minimalist, grid-like repetition, the monotonous row of white bricks nullified any sentimental/emotional value attributed to the phenomena of death.
The under-sized grave denies the iconicity attributed to it. The work makes a symbolic reference to the economy of human loss, the phenomenon of desensitization in the process of over-exposure to the violence and media hype.