As a crossborder collective, it is strange for us to speak of distance. Over the years that we have been working on this project, and for the many years of growing up on the subcontinent before that, there has always been an incredible distance between us. Our artists share experiences of loss, hope, and belonging. They listen to stories that are at once their own and very far away. They work alongside and with each other. And they do all this without ever once meeting. The distance between our countries is vast and often daunting. And yet, in this moment, as in many moments before this, we find ourselves in strikingly similar circumstances. We are now isolated, not only from each other, but also from our entire social universes. This can be debilitating and, for artists, creatively exhausting.
And so we turn, once more, to our community to make sense of this crisis. How are they coping? What do these times mean for their work? Have their approaches to their practice changed, slowed down, been suspended? This project is a collection of their responses to this moment. It is not intended as an answer but as an an open set of reactions by a group of people making sense of a difficult time, side-by-side and apart. We hope you find something in it that speaks to you.