Firdaus – Photograph

Kashmir is a part of our collective imagination- in poetry, in images, in our very understanding of beauty. But with that beauty is evoked a feeling of suffering, a deep sense of historical misunderstanding.

Yet, as the sound of boots resound in the silence of the Valley- we believe that hope will peep through half-opened windows, that human kindness will melt winter snows and that tulips will bloom in spring…

In his most famous written work, Ways of Seeing, John Berger offers us not just an idea but also an invitation to see and know the world differently.

“The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled,” he wrote.

Seeing is then a political act, not necessarily a search for something truer to life, but a philosophical stance springing from our deep understanding of history and politics through the lens of aesthetics.

A time comes in all civilizations when history demands that we think outside our personal periphery and stand in solidarity with the imperative of universal justice. Art demands ethical obligations, beauty demands consolation.

The Firdaus Exhibition is a tribute to that beauty which comes only with the vision of humanity.