Die Religion … ist das Opium des Volkes (2019)

The exhibition titled “The Quantum City: Territory, Space, Place” stemmed from Foucault’s interpretation of “Heterotopias” as “spaces comprehending multilayered meanings to places/individuals, be it a cultural, institutional or any other space for that matter. 

Heterotopic spaces characterize diversity, plurality and multiplicity as Foucault coins it “Worlds within worlds”, disturbing, intense, contradictory and transformative, all within one, all at the same time.

The performance piece framed in response was a Cubic space encompassing me that underwent transformation every passing instance and thus intentionally/unintentionally gave rise to multiple heterotopias in a single space.

The 3 hr long performance commenced with me starting to paint the glass box from within, portraying one of the numerous types of Heterotopias Foucault makes mention of i.e. “Heterotopia of deviation” that according to him are institutions for individuals whose behavior lie outside the norm (Cemeteries, asylums etc.)

By the time I painted all the four sides black, the heterotopia of deviation took the form of a “Crisis Heterotopia”, a space where actions occur in discretion, the viewer and I got disconnected, disengaged. The black box for quite a while stood as a sculptural piece by itself, static, untouched, undisturbed, reminiscent of the Kabah.

It was during this detachment/separation from the viewer, that I applied black paint on my entire body, in the process forming a new heterotopic space, a space entirely consecrated to an activity of purification, such as the Muslim Hammam, 

spaces that are isolated and penetrable, yet not freely accessible like a public space, spaces that require performing rituals. Foucault termed it the “Heterotopia of Ritual or purification.”

The third and final phase of the piece involved removing the black paint from the walls of the glass box and revealing my transfigured self, in a way portraying the transformative effects of religion and contemporary devotion on individuals within a changing society.