The Ship of Tarshish

In Ancient Indianculture, the weapons of choice between rival kingdoms were knowledge and reason. Their conquests depended solely on the intellectual capacity of the kingdom's wisest man, the Acharya. Verbal duels would take place between Acharyas in which the inferior mind would forfeit his king's sovereignty. This practice has long since died and instead we see historians referring to Alexander the Great, a ruler whose Greatness consisted of his use of violence and force to take possession of many lands. Unlike the true spiritual labor of St. Thomas, religion was spread by conquering and colonizing.

The Ship of Tarshish had been exhibited in the inaugural Kochi Muziris Biennale toits historical role as a port. The city's legacy of cultural pluralism, paired with the ancient seaport of Muziris, provided the loose conceptual framework of appearance and disappearance. The Ship of Tarshish, while it is a Biblical reference, illustrates the essential deceptiveness and darkness of man's heart: it is evil and self-seeking, and in its wake are conflict and slavery. They came bearing their spiritual Greatness and left bearing the wealth of the conquered.