Jittish Kallat, Lie of the Land. Courtesy the artist/Sainsbury Centre

AfterShock, a major new contemporary art exhibition exploring the nature of violence in the modern world and how it is presented to us, has opened at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich.

Running until Sunday September 2, the exhibition features 16 international artists, including six from India and one from Pakistan, all of who explore the images of political and social violence that confront us everyday in the media.

The show, which is the Sainsbury Centre’s contribution to Contemporary Art Norwich 2007, was initially inspired by Indian artists’ responses to religious intolerance, riots, terrorism and the on-going nuclear stand-off with Pakistan.

However, curator Yasmin Canvin has developed the theme to include work from artists from across the world.

Yasmin’s family originally came from India and was caught up in the cross-border population movements, with disastrous consequences, during the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan and she brings her family experience to the exhibition.

Her father was seven years old in 1947. A Muslim family, they were living in what became the Indian section of Punjab. Yasmin’s grandfather decided to sell up and move to Pakistan by ship, arriving safely with his family in Karachi. His brothers and their families took the cheaper and quicker option and travelled by train. All of them were killed en route.

Shilpa Gupta, Untitled. Courtesy the artist/Sainsbury Centre

“Curating Aftershock has been a great professional and private journey for me,” says Yasmin. “I am a granddaughter of the partition and grew up in the Midlands where I was bullied for being ‘different’.”

“My career in the museum world has enabled me to explore cultural diversity and our responses to international contemporary art. It has been a privilege to collaborate with the Aftershock artists and present their work to a UK audience.”

The artists in AfterShock provide differing personal responses to images of violence.

Amar Kanwar’s film, A Season Outside, is a very personal meditation on violence and non-violence, focusing on the daily theatrical military ‘show’ by Indian and Pakistani border guards at the Wagah-Atari border in Punjab.

Alia Hassan-Khan also uses film, and spent a year working in Lahore considering the imagery of security. Her film Kidnapped – Homage to Karachi is viewed from the perspective of the victim lying in the back of a car.

The paintings by Atul Dodiya and the films by Gigi Scaria both look at the life of Mahatma Ghandi and the way in which his influence is felt and remembered in India today.

TV Santhosh, Another Taxi. Courtesy the artist/Sainsbury Centre

“The artists in AfterShock have found their own strategies for depicting violence and suffering without shocking,” added Yasmin. “Through video, photography and images taken from the media, they give us the voice of the individual, producing moving personal responses to the conflict and violence they have experienced, either directly or indirectly.”

Elsewhere Jitish Kallat’s The Lie of the Land reworks familiar images - for those living in India - the well-planned politician’s photo opportunity, the rioting and the injured being stretchered away. The images are blown, splattered and interrupted by red masses and text – a unique effect created by blowing the work with a vacuum cleaner running in reverse while the images are drying.

Shilpa Gupta’s work Untitled shows seven life size images of herself in camouflage which can be manipulated by the viewer.

"Together, the artists show us alternative narratives, arguing that the truth is not in any single image but somewhere in between,” added Yasmin.