ARTAFRICACURATOR’S INSIGHTTHE PORCUPINE IN THE ROOM / GITANJALI DANG
Art as a Philosophical
Exercise
Curator Gitanjali Dang on ‘The Porcupine in the Room’
at Delfina Foundation, London, UKBroadly speaking, Khanabadosh was started with the intention of making the invisible
visible. Recently, however, we came to find this visibility-invisibility binary to be somewhat
lazy and easy so we went looking for questions that would weird things out. What of the
anxiety experienced by the ‘newly’ visibilised? What about the things that continue to
remain invisible and, in fact, thrive on opacity vis-à-vis their relation to the mainstream;
and where does all this leave ‘transparency’? Could it be that, through this process of
making visible, we are simply feeding these (supposed) disruptions to a system which
has long since normalised and fetishised them to the point of now even coveting them?
Because isn’t the left too compelled – albeit in a different register – by its will to please,
to have meaning and power?Continuing our engagement with peripheral contexts we began a playful dance with
the impasse, which led to us problematising visibility as the only way of making things
present.Sustained thinking around the binary resulted in a chance encounter with ‘the porcupine
dilemma.’ Invoked by Arthur Schopenhauer and then Sigmund Freud, the trope – also
known as ‘the hedgehog dilemma’ – sets forth a scenario in which porcupines seek
closeness in order to share body heat during the winter only to be driven apart by their
sharp quills.1/7 ARTAFRICA