This photography project connects Bengaluru and Glasgow Premium
The Hindu
Ideas around identity, both individual and collective, are reflected in every photograph on display at ‘Inheritance’, an exhibition that has 13 people showcasing their work.
The cluster of six portraits which collectively make up Queer Samsara, one of the exhibits at the ongoing Inheritance exhibition at Kanike Studios in Bengaluru’s Cooke Town, has a retro, otherworldly feel to it, encapsulating ideas of transience and ephemerality. Aryan Gulati, the photographer, says that the artwork, described as bearing witness to the birth, death and rebirth of desi queerness, comes from a deeply personal space.
“I feel everyone performs different identities, and for me, it is performing my queerness,” says the Bengaluru-based Gulati (they/them), one of the 13 young South Asians-- 6 from Bengaluru and 7 from Glasgow-- exploring shared histories, memories and identities between South Asia and the UK, through photography. “I feel we do not have enough narratives about queer people, and there are different intersections we need to explore,” says Gulati, who deliberately chose to use salt prints, a fragile medium that quickly deteriorates if not stored and preserved right, for these portraits. “I was trying to draw a parallel between how it fades like identity,” they say.
Ideas around identity, both individual and collective, are reflected in nearly every photograph on display at this exhibition, the outcome of an international collaboration between The Museum of Art & Photography (MAP) Bengaluru, Kanike, Glasgow Life Museums, and Street Level Photoworks as part of the British Council’s Our Shared Cultural Heritage (OSCH) programme.
Interestingly, the same body of work is being showcased in different iterations across four spaces: Kanike and the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP) in Bengaluru and the Glasgow Life Museums and Street Level Photoworks in the UK. And while there are minor variations linked to the space chosen, the core of it remains the same.
As the MAP website puts it, the works in this exhibition include a diversity of approaches from portraiture and staged photography to documentary to interrogate how identities are constructed and reconstructed, perceived and imagined, contested and embraced. “They explore themes of family and cultural history, migration, place, class, gender identity, conventions of social life and notions of community – unpeeling the many layers of identity, customs, beliefs and values we inherit,” it states.
According to Shilpa Vijayakrishnan, Head of Education & Outreach at MAP, this Indo-UK collaborative project’s main objective is to bring young people to the fold of museums, heritage, and art spaces. “A lot of young people feel alienated from these spaces,” she says.
The various institutions involved in this project were keen to do this via a skill-building component that would lead to an exploration of these themes. In January this year, there was a public call-out in Bengaluru and Glasgow, asking young people between the ages of 16 and 25 who wanted to hone their photography skills to apply. “We both took the same approach, looking for participants who had little or no exposure to photography,” says Vijayakrishnan, adding that the idea was to give someone an opportunity to upskill themselves, in particularly, those who may have not had such exposure or opportunities before.
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