I belong to Humanity
(Formerly titled – Possible Substitute of Water…!!!)
Vandana
2014
Performance Still
7:43 Minutes
©Vandana The Artist
Courtesy of the Artist
DESCRIPTION
I belong to Humanity operates on two levels. On one, it presents a nightmare of the future — the act of drawing one’s own blood and drinking it with a meal as a possible substitute for water if it is not saved now. Water makes up seventy percent of our world and our body; the work confronts the viewer with what happens when that resource is gone and the body must sustain itself from its own substance.
On a deeper level, the work is a statement about what lies beneath the surface of every human being. Blood is invisible from the outside — it only becomes visible when the body is accidentally or deliberately opened. In this way it is like one’s background, upbringing, past experiences, emotional patterns, and social conditioning — all of which shape a person but remain inaccessible unless someone makes the effort to go deep. We judge each other on the outer surface: skin colour, caste, religion, culture, nationality. But the blood flowing through every human body is the same red, regardless of any of these. Once we go beneath the surface, the grounds for judgment disappear. The title is a declaration — before any name, caste, colour, or creed, I belong to humanity.
I appear in red with a plate of rice and vegetables and start eating at a dining table. I take out my own blood with a syringe. I eat and drink my RED blood.
Vandana 