Existential Ruptures, Aesthetic Stance And The Interventions Into The Political  

Showkat Kathjoo, an artist from Kashmir, was the most direct and politically articulate to address the testimony of his local experience. His installation, Viewfinder, incorporates images loaded with the metaphorical layering of conflict and desolation and the inherent play of irony evoking a space where the viewer is transposed to re-negotiate his experience of the immediate and the experiential.

Kathjoo’s work shared its sense of sensationalism with Nikhil’s performance, but while the latter was received as the shock of the past, the former exuded an intimidation of the present, being as provocative and disrupting as any ultra-Dadaist would dare to be in Kashmir-the bunker as an inescapable view and an inevitable viewfinder worked as the most beautiful metaphor for dystopia.

The installation draws its primary sources from the artist’s subjective experience and creates a metaphorical allegory by re-constructing the architectural space of the bunker, a sign of discomfort and a disconcerting experience in the presence of a metamorphosed landscape. However, the most invigorating response to the installation was no response, which recalls the minimalist paradigm of ‘repetition ad deletion’, while negotiating the day to day experience numbed and perforated with such disquieting and intimidating constructions. In the changed and changing landscape, the installation becomes a viewfinder to witness and be witnessed by.

The bunker-turned-viewfinder invites the viewer to a series of encounters where the space is emptied from its actual constant to incorporate the temporal experience of inhabiting the impossible. The only view inside, which