Living to tell the tale

)At Museo Camera, Gurugram, Manisha Gera Baswani's installation show, Postcards from Home, transcends time and geographical borders to unveil memories of lives before India-Pakistan partition. Through 25 Indian and 22 Pakistani artists' portraits and stories, Baswani captures the warmth, affection and camaraderie between the two nations. Her project takes different forms in different settings, inviting patrons to journey back to an age of innocence and rekindle the embers of kinship. Postcards from Home is on till Aug 6th.

In the gigantic exhibition hall of Museo Camera, in Gurugram, hang scrolls that bear powerful pictures and heart-piercing tales. They transcend time and geographical borders to unveil the memories of lives long before history drew divisive lines between India and Pakistan.

Painter-photographer Manisha Gera Baswani’s installation Postcards from Home is like a symphony of emotions where artists recount their stories before the Radcliffe Line was drawn. Their recollection is accompanied by a photograph shot by Baswani in their studios.

Delhi-based artist Manisha has been documenting Indian artists since 2001. In 2015, she went to participate in the Lahore Biennale and began visiting Pakistani artists in their studios. “Both my parents come from that side of the border and I grew up on stories of love, loss, and belonging. My parents have always talked about a home left behind and speak Lahorian Punjabi. So, I always had a connection. ,” says Manisha.

For the exhibition, Manisha documented 22 Pakistani artists including Amin Gulgee, Muhammad Imran Qureshi, Adeela Suleman, Riffat Alvi and 25 Indians such as Gopi Gajwani, Krishen Khanna, Paramjit Singh, Nilima Sheikh, Bharti Kher and many others.

She says she found the artists with links to the Partition by sending WhatsApp messages to artists with Sindhi and Punjabi surnames and enquiring about their family history.

“Hearing their stories, I realised there was more love and longing than bitterness as portrayed otherwise. Having grown up on stories of affection, and camaraderie, I felt an artistic urge to change the narrative; that’s how the project took shape,” she says.

Baswani always travels with her Canon camera because she says, she is a serious photographer. However, lot of unplanned shootings also took place in the studios of the artists.