On March. 3, The Cube in the Arts Center hosted the opening of a new multimedia exhibition titled An Open Letter to My Country. The exhibition features 15 handwritten letters from students, faculty and contract staff, addressed to their native countries as a way of discussing ideas of nationhood, social justice and identity.

The project is independent and student led, intended to explore the relationship various individuals have with their home countries. The participants’ letters are hung on strings around The Cube and three television screens are mounted on the walls. The screens play video recordings of the participants reading out their letters, which visitors can listen to by putting on headphones connected to the individual screens.

The entrance displays the slogan behind this independent, student-led exhibition, which Nandini Kochar, Class of 2021 and one of the curators, believes well encapsulates the aim of the project: “The personal is political.”

“I think [the exhibition is] just an attempt to create spaces to talk about things that otherwise we do talk about, but only certain people get to talk about these things, either because they’re more vocal on social media or because they write articles for The Gazelle, but like what about the people in between?”

The curatorial process began in Dec. 2019, and involved two workshops and extensive brainstorming with the contributors. In addition to their letters, some chose to display photographs or objects that further supported their message.

Kochar explained that this process was quite intimate.

“Getting people to write the letters to their countries was a difficult process, not only for me but I think for them too, because ... it takes a lot of like, emotional and personal energy to be able to ... write, first of all, things that you don’t otherwise articulate, or just ... try to comprise all the things that you have to say into … a three-page paper,” said Kochar. “We really tried to make it a much more collaborative process.”

Paper and pens are also available in one corner of the exhibition for visitors to write their own letters to their countries if they wish to do so. Naweed Sadozai, part of NYU Abu Dhabi’s contract staff and a citizen of Pakistani-administrated Kashmir, decided to write a letter to the United Nations instead. Sadozai's letter is a plea for action to end the violence and suffering experienced by the people of Kashmir for decades.

“More than 25,000 women have been widowed. More than 10 thousand young people have gone injured and blind due to [the] use of pellet guns. Despite all this persecution[,] Kashmiris are continuing their liberation movement,” says Sadozai in his letter.

The exhibition brings together voices that addressed various social issues or injustices, but some individuals also took the opportunity to reflect on what they valued about their countries.