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ShareMumbai: Many of you must have travelled to another country and at times felt awkward about the various existing cultural differences in different lands. It's like discovering an alien land or a new planet. This happened to Nataliya Dyu, who is Korean by birth but brought up in Kazakhstan, after she visited India at the end of last year.
Something really touched Nataliya and to prove her point she decided to sleep on the streets of Mumbai. She recorded bizarre reactions of how the behaviour of people changes when a well-to-do human being is lying on the streets with beggars. Her upcoming exhibition at The Loft art gallery is titled Cultural Differences and consists of three video recordings and concepts.
Valeria Ibraeva, who is an art curator in Kazakhstan and has worked with Nataliya on the concept of Cultural Differences explains, "Globalisation brings us the incredible possibility of being able to travel, meet and build contacts. People visit other countries and try to understand each other. Nataliya is Asian by birth but looks very European and she was treated similarly in India.
When she tried to tell people in India that she also belongs to the Asian community, no one wanted to believe her. So, to prove her point she slept on the streets of Colaba Causeway with a beggar. People laughed at her, mocked her and pitied her for being homeless. But she was content that at least now everyone considered her as one of the Asian beggars."
As citizens of Kazakhstan, Nataliya and Valeria do not understand what people said in the video recording but they are sure it was something negative. This video is titled On the ground. The second video is about how most Asians really idealise the European way of fashion and looks. The video is titled Goodbye my Asian eyes and shows a symbolic caterpillar with Asian eyes and a beautiful butterfly adjacent to it with European eyes. The third video is titled I like Naomi. It describes Nataliya's likeness for Naomi Campbell and a culture which she has never seen yet is still crazy about.
Get there
To know more about the exhibition, visit The Loft art gallery in Mathura Mills Compound. The exhibition starts from November 6 and goes on till November 18.
