In 2001 after 9/11, educator and critic Robert Brustein reflected in The New Republic on the role of art in dark times.

"It is necessary to look past the waved flags, and the silent moments of prayer, and try to keep the arts in focus. By lighting up the dark corridors of human nature, literature, drama, music and painting can help temper our righteous demand for vengeance with a humanizing restraint. The show can't go on. It must go on.” It is indeed heartening that our show has taken off in full swing with no less than 117 artists participating in 9 shows in Kolkata and 19 in Akar Prakar alone. When our world is in trouble, when civilized norms are on the brink of destruction some of us look up to spiritual leaders to heal ourselves and others turn to artists to give expression to our collective experience. Art, in a sense, is cathartic for a society in pain.

In the show mounted in Akar Prakar, the artistic responses to terrorism are almost as varied and surprising. At the outset it is clear that there is a huge difference in the attitudes of the 9/11 film initiative in the US and Art against Terrorism The very use of the middle word in our title pre-defines a position. We expect to see works of artists who are consciously negating terrorism in principle after taking into account its ramifications in public and personal spheres. There is no accepted definition of terrorism. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics says clearly “One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.”

Ruma Dasgupta