Disappearing Graffiti: An Interview with Moonis Shah

Are you from Kashmir? Where are you based?

I am from Kashmir and currently I am a doctoral candidate at The University of Melbourne in Australia. I am based in Melbourne for now, but I intend to finish my research soon and set up my practice in Kashmir.

How did you make your way into art?

There isn’t a linear trajectory which led me to art. I suppose many diverse interests and events led me that way. My fascination with camera, family photo albums, drawing and painting in my school days is perhaps one of the major points of departure which led me into art.

What was the idea behind this exhibit?

In context to what has happened in Kashmir in the past few years which included an unprecedented and a strange lockdown on all communications, this project speaks about how state censorship works as a tool of silencing. The work builds upon the concept of Erasure which doesn’t mean something which is erased and no longer accessible, but it is a concept which Heidegger uses (originally called “Sous rature”). It refers to a technique of crossing out a word within a text but allowing it to remain legible and in place. The crossing out of the word therefore transcends the literal meaning of the word and the word acts as an object of metaphor brining in play alternate meanings and speaking about limits of language. In the context of this work, the erasing of graffiti texts in Kashmir by state authorities does not silence the graffiti but instead has a reverse effect making the graffiti, objects of metaphor, which speak about the larger issues of politics, landscape and fractures between the population and the state. These remnant texts act as erasures which leak out diverse meanings, alternate histories, information and readings into the cultural and political life of text and landscape in Kashmir which are otherwise intended to be suppressed. They become sites which render the concepts of language and ideas of communication paradoxical, rendering their meaning even more radical, than it was before the state’s act of erasure. There is a text which is accompanies the work and it also adds further to the works meaning.

“This ongoing project “Life of Text from the Mountains” studies the mysterious disappearance and erasure of texts/s written on walls in Kashmir. The remnants of these disappeared texts are archives of invisible ghosts who wander, watch and erase and yet leave behind traces, imprints and casts.”

4. What’s happening in Kashmir right now?  Is it still under lockdown?

I think there are strata of landscape which we can all see and access and then there are underground processes which take place and are undetectable. With conflict economies the underground and its processes are more ghost like. One can only wonder what is happening. I suppose the same is true with Kashmir as well. At the same time, I think Kashmir alongside other conflict economies around the world are cites which are consciously constructed in a manner that obfuscate the attempts at resolution. The idea is to engineer chaos not only in terms of social and economic stability but in terms of even how the landscape and cities are constructed and designed so that the geography appears to be irresolvable as noted by Eyal Weizman as well in the case of Palestine and Israeli conflict. This process has been taking place since ages everywhere and I suppose it is currently at work in Kashmir as well.

Does your art often connect you to your roots?

I intend, through my process and work to question and challenge the notions of what a root is, what a belonging might refer to especially in context of Kashmir where boundaries are blurry, and sights can be mirages.

What is making this graffiti in Kashmir disappear?

I think it is the fear from the state towards its “citizens” which is quite funny and humorous. There is a sense of dark humour in this whole thing: The state apparatus with all its machinery and structure fears the graffiti and therefore tries to erase it, only to strengthen it conceptually.

There’s been media censorship and intimidation in India, is it dangerous being an artist with a political message in India?

I think there are many radical artists who are doing very efficient work in India. What I mean is they continue to make work even though their ideas are intimidating and “dangerous”. There are dangers which one has to navigate through. E.g. the use of allegories, poetic and metaphoric languages could be one way to navigate through these dangers but sometimes one has to confront them as well as an artist. For me the intention is to create a possibility of ideas to overflow, subvert and question the logic of boring and mundane things e.g. One’s constant experience with violence makes it part of our everyday and generally everyday is experienced as “normalcy”. To break this “normalcy” about everyday and to read everyday itself as a complex process and activity can be sometimes yield very angry responses but they are necessary to be questioned nonetheless. But as an artist, one develops strategies and methodologies of communication which are more efficient and help us frame and ask questions about things which are otherwise hard to address.

What effect do you hope this piece has, if any? 

I have no idea.