Witness and Evidence: deliberations on ruins by Sajid Wajid Shaikh & Jofre Oliveras
Witness:
From Old English wit(t), gewit(t), denoting the mind as the seat of consciousness
Evidence:
From Latin evidentia, meaning obvious to the eye or mind
When prolonged conflicts transform time into noise, what ruins shape our lives and behaviors?
Such is the vastness of the wastelands we inhabit, that those in strife, those faraway, and all of us as scrollers of incessant content online – never remain unaffected. Standing in front of a pandemonium, unresolved paradoxes makes no one a passerby.
WITNESS AND EVIDENCE is a discord rally of silent materials that howl histories of negation. Through artworks that transform accumulated ruins in spaces outside as well as within ourselves into varied tangibilities and forms, the curation attempts to enable conversations on the fragments and pieces that surround us in times of continuous conflicts. As a trial is summoned through exhibits without a court, there is no bench for judges and no gavel to put order here. Watching the onlookers are artworks as ruins, ruins as witness and evidence. Accompanying them are statements as well as facts which express the state of being pushed to extinction, the desire to become extant even when one experiences a state of decay. With images that highlight powers we create, continue to negotiate with, even abuse, artists Sajid Wajid Shaikh and Jofre Oliveras deliberate on ruins within the confines of Gallery XXL to explore historical extinctions that seek a preservation and futures that are getting built for generations to come.
