Sibtain Hyder
Curator’s note: Love is often understood as fulfillment, a state of completion, even excess. Popular culture leans heavily on this idea of wholeness where each completes another like a miraculous jigsaw puzzle. Yet, how much do we recognise the chasm that is implicit in the being together of individuals? What of the quiet distance that intimacy cannot entirely erase?
In the Japanese dystopian science fiction novel, Ai no Kusabi, the word ‘kusabi’ is often understood as ‘wedge’ in English, a mechanism that performs the dual function of separating materials and securing them in place. An intense, unconventional love story between individuals from vastly different backgrounds, Ai no Kusabi is commonly translated as ‘The Space Between’. Thematically, the title captures a paradox central to the narrative: the presence of the gap is as real as the forces that overcome it.
In his experimental edit, Sibtain Hyder turns to this very tension. He takes the hollow between the figurines locked in an embrace to dwell on a love that seems to be slowly eroding with the fraying of the seams. An absence is palpable, challenging the limits of physical closeness. The dramatic score elevates the tension, building towards a crescendo of anticipation only to spin it off to an anti-climax drained of colour.
What, then, do we see when we look at these figures? Do we see their embrace or the hollow left in its wake?
On a meta level, the question extends to the act of making art itself. Constructed from borrowed elements—a sculpture not his own, music not his own—the video could be seen hovering somewhere between creation and assemblage. The disenchanted love it portrays begins to echo the alienation that overcomes an artist trying to conjure up a work not their own. In The Wedge of Love, Sibtain lingers in this space of in-betweenness of art and love both, even as the chasms may, in the end, remain irreducible.
Sibtain Hyder is a visual creator from Indian administered Kashmir. He currently serves as the multimedia producer at The Caravan.
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