Reinforcements for the Displaced (i) 2013 “Certain absences are so stressed that they arrest us with their intentionality and purpose, like neighborhoods that are defined by the populations held away from them. Where is the shadow of the presence from which the text has fled? Where does it heighten, where does it dislocate?’’ Toni Morrison, ‘Unspeakable Things Unspoken’ Michigan quarterly review, Vol-28, No.1, Winter-1989, Page:11-12 Reinforcements for the Displaced (ii) 2013 “As soon as I Desire, I am asking to be considered. I am not merely here and now, sealed into thingness. I am for somewhere else and for something else. I demand that notice be taken of my negating activity in so far as I do battle for the creation of a human world of reciprocal recognitions.” - Frantz Fanon; Black Skin, White Masks. Reinforcements for the Displaced (iii) 2013 “ "The dead" we say as if speaking of "the people" who gave up on making history simply to get through Something dense and null groan without echo underground and owl-voiced I cry Who are these dead these people these lovers who if ever did listen no longer answer : We : ” -Adrienne Rich; Tonight No Poetry will Serve. 2007-2010, Page 50 Reinforcements for the Displaced (iv) 2013 “ ‘Wiped Out,’ they say, Turn left or right, There’s millions like you up here, picking their way through refuse, looking for words they lost. You’re your country’s lost property with no office to claim you back. You’re polluting our sounds, You’re so rude. ‘Get back to your language’, they say.” - Adil Jussawalla; Missing Person (Clearing House, 1976), Page 15. Reinforcements for the Displaced (VIII) 2013 “A void is empty but not a Vacuum.” - Adrienne Rich; an Atlas of Difficult World. Poems 1988-91, 1991 Page 10 Reinforcements for the Displaced (vi) 2013 “The Other Land: Language” Susan Sontag; As Consciousness is Harnessed to the Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980; 2012 Reinforcements for the Displaced (v) 2013 “Let it hurt, let it hurt” Susan Sontag; As Consciousness is Harnessed to the Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980; 2012 Quotations, taken from some selected authors are rendered by the processes of burning and embroidery, to produce spatial metaphors of loss, absence and fragility. These textile panels are suspended and installed within the site of a museum or a gallery, to create a space of free floating pages of a torn book or diary. The words on these pages are portrayed as handwritten, either by removing the letters (burning), or by pricking pins on the ‘pages’. The meticulousness of the process of hand embroidery is used to create fragility of temporality. The quotations that are chosen, also represent the tremendous kinds of emotional losses that are experienced by the itinerant migrant. The words, etched out, off the surface of materials, leave the words absent in space, like the loss of language itself. These words, legible, yet transient, get fragmented and are read in their absences, on the walls and floor, the interplay of light, shadows and ambience of the site.