Discourses on Partition through Visual Culture (original) (raw)

Partition of India generated intensive cultural trauma. Post-memories and prosthetic memories of the horrific division continue to inhabit the collective consciousness of millions in the subcontinent. Narratives on Partition abound despite which a lot remains unsaid. This paper has its focus on how art from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh has approached and represented Partition. The artists whose works have been referred to in this paper are victims, witnesses, and survivors, 1.5 generation as well as those who were born much later but who nonetheless have been claimed by the legacy of divisiveness, rupture, and trauma. The paper also studies how art has emerged as a very potent testimony to the pain of millions who were dispossessed in the wake of 1947 and 1971.