WORK IT OUT PLATFORM 2021 – A Hybrid Platform inhabiting the Digital and Analogue Space
The celebratory shouts of freedom from colonial rule were drowned out by the cries of millions frantically making their way through the corpse-littered landscape of India and Pakistan. After more than 100 years of the British East India Company rule and an additional 90 years of the British Raj, the Indian subcontinent had finally achieved Independence. What should have been a moment of crowning triumph after years of anti-colonial struggle was indelibly marred by unimaginable violence and bloodshed. How could neighbouring communities, accustomed to centuries of relative peace have suddenly turned so violently upon one another?
Mail Art 2020/2021
I was introduced to Jennifer Rae Forsyth, an artist on the other side of the world and we began our Mail Art collaborative on 17th March 2020. During this international pandemic our post card sized images, handwritten texts and letters took center stage especially in an era of instant messaging and FaceTime on the go. In the experimental artistic simmer of the late 1950s, the everyday creativity of letter-writing gave rise to a veritable movement: that of “mail art”, an anti-establishment of serial imaginative expression whose inclusive nature has kept it alive into the Digital Age. This rich, inspiring, tactile experience and exchange combined has given prominence to Mail Art or Postal Art/Correspondence Art.