Your childhood was spent in a ULFA detention camp after your father surrendered. Please talk about the moment you realized your childhood wasn’t “normal.” How did that feeling become the seed of this work?
For most of my childhood, life inside the camp felt unquestionable; This was just the world I knew. Even while studying political science, my engagement with politics remained distant, detached from how power and control shaped my daily existence. That isolation began to change when I encountered art as a critical practice at Santiniketan, where I was encouraged to consider place, history, and my own lived position within them.
This awareness intensified during the Covid lockdown, when I returned to Goalpara and was also asked to leave our only shelter camp, without any clear alternative. The instability of that moment forced me to confront what “home” really means, not as a fixed place, but as something conditional and fragile.
Conversations with former ULFA members added another layer. Many described entering the movement in search of a homeland, but that idea was not resolved after the surrender, replaced by surveillance, camps, and prolonged uncertainty. These interconnected experiences of inheritance, loss, and suspended belonging gradually shaped my practice, grounding it in the unresolved politics of memory, testimony, and living without a safe home.
You have mentioned that high bamboo walls and watchtowers were part of your everyday landscape as a child. How do you resolve the tension between your living memory and the need for critical distance when creating this work?
Let me first clarify that the walls around the camp were made of concrete, not bamboo. But as a kid, the ingredients hardly mattered. Watchtowers, high walls and constant surveillance were part of my everyday landscape; They felt normal, even invisible. Critical distance came much later. When I started studying art, I learned to look at my life not just as a personal memory but as a political position. That shift allowed me to revisit these places with awareness, without trying to beautify or sentimentalize. Rather than recreate the camp literally, I work with metaphors, watchtowers, structures, sound, and absence to talk about power, control, and vulnerability.
My process moves back and forth between intimacy and distance. I rely on living memory for emotional truth, but I constantly question it through research, conversation, and historical context. This tension is essential for function; This allows me to consider both the child, who accepted these structures as normal, and the artist, who now understands their violence.
Carnivorous plants glow attractively under ultraviolet light, but they represent the media power that “eats everything.” Please tell us about the development of this metaphor – why carnivorous plants in particular?
The metaphor came very organically. Growing up and later spending time in Meghalaya, carnivorous plants were part of the landscape – they are beautiful, strange and quietly violent. They do not attack openly; They seduce. That logic stuck with me. In the installation, carnivorous plants form a glowing garden, each equipped with speakers broadcasting looping news audio. Their color and ultraviolet glow are deliberately eye-catching. It shows how state and media narratives often appear inspiring, aesthetic, and harmless, yet are fundamentally predatory. Like plants, these narratives first attract attention, and later one discovers how they complicate, disentangle, and consume lived experience. At the centre, a watchtower houses the intimate testimonies of former ULFA members, demanding closeness and time.
Overlapping news broadcasts in Assamese, Hindi and English create a noise that “swallows up the meaning.” What do you want the audience to feel when those voices “blend into each other”?
I wasn’t interested in conveying meaning. These voices already belong to the public domain; They have been heard, repeated and normalized. By distorting them, I wanted to take away their authority and turn them into something spectral. They no longer speak; They hover. When transmissions blend into each other, language fails. What emerges is a field of noise where no single voice can be trusted or fully understood. This has been done intentionally. Power rarely operates through truth; It operates through excess, repetition and saturation. Meaning is swallowed not by silence, but by quantity. I want the audience to feel confused, even uncomfortable, inside this collapse. In that disorientation, the work points to a political situation where dominant narratives do not clarify reality but rather obscure it, rendering lived experience unheard beneath the noise.
The burnt house contains genuine archival materials – newspapers, photographs, booklets from the 1990s. How did you obtain these documents, and what was the most horrifying piece you discovered?
Archives emerged gradually through research and faith. While meeting former ULFA members – inside the camp and in their homes, I would gently ask if there was anything left from the movement era. In most cases, nothing was done. Many had already destroyed their materials, either to spare themselves painful memories or out of fear. Even decades later, keeping such documents can still seem dangerous. Some materials survived only by chance, reaching me quietly and carefully. The burnt house reflects this reality, not just loss, but deliberate erasure as a condition of survival.
Some pieces troubled me greatly, but I decided not to include them and I will not talk about them publicly. Trust and security are at the heart of this work. What matters to me is not to reveal everything, but to respect the vulnerability of those who have shared their history with me.
The ULFA years shaped an entire generation in Assam, yet these stories “never came out”, as you say. What response have you received from Assamese visitors compared to those unfamiliar with this history?
For many Assamese visitors, the work opens an emotional retreat – nostalgia, sadness and recognition emerge almost immediately. Some share their memories; Others sit quietly with it. People who are unfamiliar with this history respond with curiosity and a desire for immediacy, context, continuity, and accessibility. Many are calling for a book or a full film – something that would allow these silent histories to travel beyond space and remain available.
This assignment required you to revisit personal trauma while conducting rigorous research. How do you take care of yourself as an artist working with such heavy material?
It was emotionally exhausting. Some stories stayed with me long after the conversation ended. Even now, there are interviews I haven’t been able to listen to again. When I was meeting people and recording their experiences, I often needed a timeout before starting the next conversation. The weight of what they shared required peace. The editing process was even more difficult. Returning to those voices—listening closely, again and again—means reopening feelings I hadn’t fully processed. So the work came forward slowly. I had to respect my boundaries. Meanwhile, I learned to step away. I was fortunate to have close friends who understood this process. Traveling to the mountains with him gave me peace and distance, a way to breathe again. Nature became a form of care – providing a place to return to work with peace, grounding and gentleness. For me, caring became part of the practice, doing this work meant learning how to listen deeply not only to others, but to myself.
What do you hope someone takes away from you? cool weight of shadow — Especially someone who has no prior knowledge about the Assam insurgency?
I don’t expect the audience to come away with information about the Assam rebellion. This work does not demand understanding; It demands attention. Although it emerges from a specific history, it speaks to a global situation where power dictates what is visible, credible, and worthy of attention.
What began as an exploration of individual and collective memory gradually became a question of how realities are constructed. Power often presents a polished, disposable surface, while inconvenient truths remain buried beneath it. The work invites viewers to sit with this tension and ask themselves what they choose to see and what they choose to ignore.
I noticed that some viewers were simply drawn to the visual aesthetic, taking photos and moving on, while others stopped, listening, and uncovering the layered contexts within the work. This difference is not accidental; It reflects how power works today, encouraging spectacle over depth and movement over reflection.
Ultimately, the project demands effort. To connect with layered realities, one must slow down, listen, and be present. Whatever the audience takes away is their choice, but that choice itself becomes a political act.
Arunima Majumdar is a freelance writer. He is @sermoninstone on Twitter and @sermonsinstone on Instagram.
