Amidst the growing urban scenario displacement and migration are very closely aligned. Siberian birds migrate for a few months each year as a natural phenomeno but human migration is not always time-bound. Both internal and overseas migration has increased considerably over the last decade. The unregulated Labour market and liberal internal migration rules are key factors responsible for increased migration. The core reasons leading to migration could be security, nature of work, disease, starvation, political or religious unrest, neglect or simply betterment. So many people see migration as an opportunity for freedom and growth (employment, in most cases). But at the same time, not all migrations and displacements take place out of human will some are a question of life's harsh necessities and sheer survival.
Issues of displacement and migration force us to question and re-think on the idea and sentiment of belonging. Do migrants ever really connect and engage constructively with relatively new spaces? How do they bridge the cultural lacuna, does a new abode ever become a home for a migrant? What is the impact of migration on ecology, urban landscape and cultural integrity? Is the world moving towards betterment by having a multi cultural, multilingual, multi ethnic diversity? Do immigrants feel marginalised and socially isolated or are they willing to assert their presence on a relatively new terrain? Do issues of ethnicity, race, gender, representation, identity and otherness crop up in the peripheral vision of inhabitants and how do they cope with these? Are real identities lost in cultural translation or they get hybridised? How then does the spatially perforated landscape create a balance between places and spaces? Is there adequate synergy between migration and development? What are the actual problems behind the garb of migration that are unnoticed or may be go unacknowledged? Possibly, the need of the hour is to enhance public infrastructure (housing, transport, education etc.) to match the growing population's fundamental needs and monitor the immigration flow.
Art tends to give agency to a variety of issues that affect an artist, individually or as part of a social spectrum. The artist's cultural memory tends to echo through his/her work. Through this issue, the idea is to investigate the artist's contested presence as an observer of these complexities of migrations or the challenges of being a migrant him/herself. The artists as agents of illumination employ their imaginative potential and the creative space emerges from the struggle between populated and empty spaces or between abandoned and engulfed landscapes. The apparent foreignness of existence in the contemporary nomadic condition makes it a fertile ground for artistic intervention. The invisible tension and the power dynamics of a multi-ethnic society conjure up diverse associations that need to be addressed and elaborated upon.
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