Performative Site-Specific Installation | Crack International Art Residency | Curated by Imran Mushter Nafees | 2024

Sarkar constructs a performative installation where the simple act of crossing a waterbody by boat unfolds into a layered inquiry into language, power, and repetition. Developed during the Crack International Art Residency, the work responds directly to the site: a lake, a boat, and the vacant land across.

Building on his earlier New Words series—where politically charged terms from media coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict were prefixed with “NEW”—this iteration introduces a deliberate reversal. Words painted on the boat now carry the prefix “NO,” not as mere negation but as an active refusal of recurring violence and displacement. 

Viewers are invited to cross the water in search of New Words, engaging in conversations about migration, land, and language during the boat ride. Upon reaching the far shore, they encounter these words displayed in book form. What begins as a journey toward meaning or revelation ultimately culminates in a confrontation with repetition—the promised land remains unchanged: familiar, unresolved, and persistent.