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‘Home’ an irony, a story of destruction, displacement, and hope

Rachel Whiteread’s ‘Internal Objects’ portrays an occurrence of a catastrophe, with nature taking over human settlements. Retrospecting the subject, the work that reminiscent ‘Internal Objects’ is Marzia Farhana’s (Bangladesh) ‘Ecocide and the Rise of Free Fall’. With installing the remains upside down, Marzia depicted the devastation that followed the floods in Kerala (India) in 2018. Echoing the same, through his work ‘Serenity of Desolation’, Veer Munshi narrated the stories of casualties that took place in Kashmir folds in 2014.

Contradicting these, ‘Victoria Terminus’ witnessed a human-made disaster. Manifested as a home for an enormous number of migrants, brimming with the stories of displacement and relocation, in the hope to earn living and lead a better life in a metropolitan city, had turned into a place of horror and despair. T. V. Santhosh’s ‘Victoria Terminus’ reiterated the terror attack of 26/11 when numbers of migrants lost their lives and hope, that questioned the certainty of a place we assume as home.

The tent in the work ‘Taking Refuge’ signifies the Buddhist philosophy of rebirth. The tent in a metaphoric sense represents Earth, serving as a refuge of the human body, where a human takes birth, lives, and dies to take birth again and the cycle goes on. Home is where one feels secure, in place, and at peace. For few, it stays the same for the rest of their lives, but for others it is transitional. At times it is intentional, at times it is accidental and at times it is natural. In ways, home is where we live, connect, and make memories, whether it is for a lifetime or for a limited time span.