Fragile Belonging: Visit A New Delhi Exhibition Exploring The Human Cost Of Displacement

What does home mean to you?

According to the 2022 UN Habitat report, more than 150 million people are homeless across the world, and a staggering 1.6 billion are living in inadequate housing conditions without proper protection from the weather and the elements. It's easy to lose sight of what it means to 'be home' or 'have a home' when faced with these dire statistics, but it's important that we don't succumb to despair. Home is not only a physical space — a house with a yard, an apartment with a small balcony, or a palace with a thousand windows. Like James Baldwin once said, "home is not a place but (...) an irrevocable condition".

'Unhoming: Fragile Belonging', a group exhibition on view till January 9, 2025, at the Exhibit 320 art gallery in New Delhi, emerges as a visceral response to the incomprehensible and often morally disjointed realities of displacement, oppression, and human suffering — specifically in the context of the Gaza strip in Palestine. As Israel's ongoing genocide forces millions of Gazans to flee their homes and confront systemic violence, the exhibition seeks to explore the fractured notions of home, identity, and belonging in a fraught world. The very term 'unhoming' conjures up a haunting sense of uprootedness — a loss that goes beyond mere physical shelter and penetrates the core of one’s socio-psychological and cultural existence.

The exhibition addresses how 'home' transcends its functional definition as a place of shelter, instead embodying a complex matrix of identity, security, memory, and belonging. It explores how displacement and forced migration shape the human condition, calling into question the socio-political structures that create such fragile states of belonging. This alienation mirrors a deeper crisis of identity, where being 'unhomed' also implies a severance from community, culture, and self.

This exploration of the constructs of 'home' is crucial because it challenges audiences to rethink what it means to belong and how society places differential values on life. It's intention is to evoke both empathy and critical reflection while drawing attention to the shared human experience of displacement and the stark inequities that arise when people are stripped of their homes and their dignity.

According to curator Deeksha Nath, “This exhibition challenges the simplistic understanding of ‘home.’ It seeks to unpack its layered meanings — home as identity, as memory, as culture — and how its absence redefines the human experience. Each artist in this exhibition brings a unique lens to the idea of ‘unhoming’, creating a collective dialogue that is both urgent and necessary.”

The exhibition invites viewers to critically engage in collective thought and action pertaining to displacement and forced migration, and addresses the xenophobia and marginalisation faced by refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants. Underscoring the shared humanity that transcends these man-made divisions, the artists urge viewers to reflect on their own privileges through their disruptive bodies of work.

Unhoming: Fragile Belonging, a group exhibition curated by Deeksha Nath, is on view at Exhibit 320, New Delhi, till January 9, 2025.

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