Single channel video, 10 min, colour, sound, 2003

This video is set against the backdrop of genocide against the minority Indian Muslim community in the state of Gujarat (starting Feb 2002). It takes place one year after the genocide at a popular public recreational site, that of the balloon target shooting stall. The text I LOVE MY INDIA acts as a catalyst, an interface screen within the visual space, through which larger concepts of religion, national identity, self and community are mitigated. It’s a performative intervention set within the recreational and violent gestures of the everyday, while drawing comments on the world’s largest democracy. The varied responses reveal a sense of loss, of a perceived nationhood and a love for home.

Critic Nancy Adajania writes about the work, “Using the opinion poll format to satirise the idea of a general understanding of social and political injustices, the artist subjects the practice of electoral democracy in India to critique, by employing the metaphor of random target practice. The notion of play as a ludic intervention phrased in a political context permeates this work.”