Page 58 - Dimple B Shah - Presentation-2019_Neat

Mapping Sacred Spaces
Live Action 11, Gothenburg, Sweden 2016
This performance was about marking the sacred space, the earth; the land is becoming
non livable / inhabitable space it is stained by bloodshed the blood of innocent and
common people. The whole world is slowly becoming space of war zone which is divided
into sacred and non sacred spaces. Every moment we are seeing these global
phenomenon happing people are losing their home their city their country and are
migrating to unknown and different land and finally end up as refugee or lose their life in
process. The whole world smells the blood, blood of innocent men women and children.
Slowly world is becoming like hell where there is no space for humanity, love and
compassion it is war for power money and politics. Through this performance my
attempt was to bring as sense of the psychological state of people who are refugees in
some other land. Bring attention to their struggle, the tension and striving for existence.
Through this performance I brought attentions, concerns related human psycho-
sociological condition where they strive for their existence, hope of life, dream and
Breath freely. Performance was to bring this unknown struggle through action and
marking human territories in sacred and non sacred space.

Through ritualistic act of carrying the turmeric root in my mouth all through the
performance was to reciprocate psychosocial tensions through act of body tension I
emphasized on to the struggle to maintain faith in sacredness, humanity and make
sacred space for living. The slow act of showering turmeric powder on the floor mapping
and marking the space into sacred space this was long performance about an hour,
where I tried to build faith in humanity, sacred, pure and healing space. Turmeric acts as
healing agent and also transforming agent in performance, later this whole situation of
sacred space was turned in to non sacred space when the act changed. Now I entered
into second layer of tension where the weight of homelessness, the refugee and
migration came into picture metaphorically through balancing act where at one point I
tied salt and knife on wooden stick and other point bag of belonging, memoires of
homeland.
The weight of this belonging was heavier to carry while balancing myself through
situation I tried to mark the pain through water this changed my sacred space into non
sacred space it represent stains of blood of innocent men women and children from war
zone, it had stained with broken dreams it stained with broken homes.

This was inevitable act and a fact that it cannot be hidden or erased and then I tried to
heal myself by pouring more turmeric on my body and whole act was mix of healing and
pain, but stain remained and it’s up to the people how it can be solved and turned
back into sacred space again.