A confluence of conflicts

Conflictorium is a one-of-a-kind museum of conflicts tucked away in a corner of Ahmedabad

Hidden by a peepal tree and flanked by a mausoleum and a temple, with a church and the district court complex a stone’s throw away, stands the Conflictorium, a one-of-a-kind museum of conflicts in the country. The location itself is testimony to its existence.

Housed in the 90-year-old dilapidated Gool Lodge — it once belonged to a Parsi woman, Bachuben Nagarwala, Ahmedabad’s first hair stylist — in the bylanes of Mirzapur, the Conflictorium is a “participatory museum” that addresses conflict. The brochure says the museum seeks to act as a “third space” to create a dialogue through art.

Ahmedabad is perhaps an apt place for such a museum: The state’s history is punctuated with violent episodes, starting from those that culminated in its separation from the Bombay Presidency. Conflictorium documents every riot and major incident of violence in and around Ahmedabad.
 

Avni Sethi, a former student of interdisciplinary design at Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Bengaluru, had designed the Conflictorium as her final-year project. “Conflict is a natural part of our being; we have to figure out how to deal with it,” she says. “When I was researching for my project, many would ask me why a museum, as people no longer visit them. This led me to think, why not turn the idea of a museum upside down.”

The auditorium inside the museum. Photo: Yasin D

 

Since April 2013, Conflictorium has attracted about 44,000 visitors. Sethi says the figure is higher than the footfall at some other museums in the city, that too, without a single penny being spent on publicity.

Sethi and her team are trying to address a sensitive issue in an avant-garde way. Walking through the museum’s corridors, which were once painted in bright shades of blue, one tends to get reflective. Sethi wanted to design and develop the space as a reflective one; she has succeeded to a great extent.

The space removes the “yellow line” between the visitor and the artefacts and encourages a dialogue with oneself: Listening to audio clips, storing a part of your memory in empty glass jars or writing your heart out in a paper chit that can be tagged on to the “Sorry Tree”, the journey indeed is experiential.

Banners containing quotes hang in a corridor of the Conflictorium museum in Ahmedabad. Photo: Yasin D

The peepal tree just outside the museum has been used effectively by the designers: It acts as a tree of conscience. It is also perhaps the most famous exhibit at Conflictorium, carrying hundreds of notes of apology from visitors. 

Sethi and her team have also come up with a novel way to raise funds for the upkeep of the museum. “We calculated that it needs Rs 5,555 a year for basic upkeep,” she says. “If 365 people pitch in to fund the museum for a day, that takes care of it.”