Paper short abstract:

From interviews with Indian artists as their works and protests are on migration flow and legality issues in South Asia, I coalesce art history and legal studies to understand migration as a concept in the 21st century

Paper long abstract:

I will examine the concept of 'migration' through the lens of art history, legal and political theory.

The current outrage of protests in India concerning the illegal status of Muslim migrants comes after the passing of the recent law 'Citizenship (Amendment) Act' 2019 in December 2019. Many experts have pointed that it directly contravenes the basic foundation of the Constitution of India where no law shall be passed on the basis that it is discriminatory to a particular religion. This law allows migrants facing persecution from neighboring Islamic countries into India with the religious faith of Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis, Buddhists and Jains but not Muslims. As a result, this law will potentially displace more than 200 Muslim migrants in South Asia.

From my interviews with artists, Berlin protests against the law are being lead by a young Berlin based Indian artist Sujatro Ghosh whose art remains affected by the nationalistic agenda of the Indian government that reflects in these protests as performative democracy.

I wish to highlight the Indian artist Shilpa Gupta's artistic practices which explore the historical border tensions and narratives of migration between India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. My interviews with Shilpa Gupta and Sujatro Ghosh as a methodology and their artistic practices enquiry into the migration politics will show as their work maps the need to research on migration crisis globally.

Their position questions the value that art places in a dynamic socio-political changing world unfurling the debate of art's usefulness to politics and the aesthetics of politics.