en masse by Alana Hunt
Artist statement
This work was made on Gija Country in the remote north-west of Australia. While the grasshoppers en masse were an awe inspiring sensation in their own right, they also brought to my mind events occurring in India at the same time. In early 2016 a number of students were arrested from Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi where I had completed my masters. They were showered with accusations of being “anti-national” after organising a poetry reading as a tribute to a Kashmiri man who had been executed by the Indian state. A media trial ensued, and what began as a small cohort of individuals attending a poetry reading grew into a widespread movement whose political and educational ramifications are still being felt in India today through forms of resistance and repression, including the continuing incarceration of pro-democracy activists, human rights advocates, and journalists. And so, this video remains an ode to the distinct power of small things en masse.
About the artist
Alana Hunt makes art and writes and tries to find the most affective ways for this material to move in the world. In 2020 her decade-long evolving memorial Cups of nun chai was published in book form by New Delhi based Yaarbal Books after being serialised in the newspaper Kashmir Reader between 2016-17. In recent years, as part of SPACED Rural Utopias program, she has been an artist in residence with the Kimberley Land Council, materialising work about the WA Aboriginal Heritage Act into video, photography, printed matter, and public events. Alana is currently working on a super 8mm film that examines contemporary colonial life in the north-west of Australia. This will premiere at the Northern Centre for Contemporary Art in late 2023. She is currently a finalist in the Ramsay Art Prize (Art Gallery of South Australia) and has recently exhibited with PhotoKTM (Photo Circle, Kathmandu), Growing Like a Tree: Sent a Letter (Sunaparanta, Goa), and Every Inch: The Bureaucratic Affect in Colonisation (Cross Arts, Sydney).
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Image Credit: en masse, 2016, digital video 32:02