N.M.: Free trade, according to Winin Peri era and Jeremy Seabrook, authors of Global Parasites, a book that has had a lasting influence on my thinking, is "based on the neo-classical philosophy and framework of perfectly competitive markets in which resources are optimally allocated by the normal operation of market forces, and both buyers and sellers reap economic gains.

" The truth in this enterprise is quite different. There is little equal interdependence and interaction between trading countries if they happen to be One Third World and Two Third World countries. Powerful and economically advantaged countries often exploit free trade to source cheaper raw materials from the not so economically advantaged world,off load expensive finished goods there which are often useless to the local population, and maintain these countries in subservient development patterns.

K.K.: How do you hope to tackle these issues in your work?

N.M.: As we have been offered a ship's container as a site for installation,
I would like to de-idealize the idea of trade and bring out its exploitative
nature using the container as a metaphor. The ephemerality of the work I plan to
do will contradict the materiality of the commodities that are usually sent
in containers. The trade I am questioning is slave trade, trade in terms of
creating false needs in communities or seductive trade, and intellectual trade
as in the recent instance when the intellectual property rights of an Indian
traditional medicinal herb and insecticide :Neem (Azaderachta indica), was
taken over by the Americans. It is bizzare to think that we will perhaps be
buying back Neem products from the U.S.A. one of these days.

K.K.: Could you talk about the essential impetus in your planned installation 'Free' Trade, for Containers '96?

"Free Trade", work made in situ in a ship's container
96 Containers Art Across the Oceans
Copenhagem Cultural Capital
Asian Region Curator Oscar Ho
Indian Curator Kamala Kapoor.