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Rape is Political: Ashfika Rahman’s Portraits from the Khagrachari Hills

Anisha Baid Jan 18, 2021

Ashfika Rahman’s photo series titled Rape is Political attempts to visualise and give voice to the political nature of sexual violence in the Khagrachari hills in the borderlands of India, Bangladesh and Myanmar.

The First Women of the Institution: Homai Vyarawalla’s Photographs of Early Women’s Colleges in India

Anisha Baid Feb 13, 2021

Homai Vyarawalla, who also operated under the pseudonym Dalda 13, is widely known as India’s first woman press photographer.

Inner and Outer Lives: The Untold Stories of Women by Homai Vyarawalla

Anisha Baid Feb 13, 2021

Curated by Sabeena Gadihoke and supported by the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts, Inner and Outer Lives: The Many Worlds of Homai Vyarawalla was an exhibition of photographs by India’s pioneering female photojournalist held at the Shridharani Gallery, Triveni Kala Sangam in New Delhi.

Looking Beyond the Cinematic: Sabeena Gadihoke’s Selling Soap and Stardom

Ketaki Varma Feb 15, 2021

In 2010, Tasveer Ghar: A House of Pictures invited scholars from around the world to comment on entrepreneur and art connoisseur Priya Paul’s collection of popular Indian art, which was digitised in 2008.

“Unsteady Luminosity”: The Photograph in Modern Malayali Novels

Ankan Kazi Feb 26, 2021

For the Anglo-Indian community, as we saw in our earlier posts, the “lost original” symbolised a mythic search for a culturally homogenous identity that was not available. If we turn to Malayalam novels of the early twentieth-century, we will find the vision of a “lost original” transferred onto a slightly different social value.

What is a Cine-Ecology? Scenes from Debashree Mukherjee’s Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City

Ketaki Varma Mar 12, 2021

“Filmmaking depends on a dense network of human and nonhuman energies,” writes Debashree Mukherjee as she explains the photographs in her recent book Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City.

Documenting Truth: An Interview with Masrat Zahra

Ketaki Varma Apr 01, 2021

Masrat Zahra speaks to Ketaki Varma about what drove her to photojournalism, offering a local, female perspective to Kashmiri narratives and the importance of a continued ethical journalistic practice.

Making of a Local Icon: Indu Antony’s Feminist Public Art Project Cecilia’ed

Anisha Baid Apr 02, 2021

Cecilia’ed, a multifaceted public art project by Indu Antony, manifested as a year-long programme of community events around the concerns of women’s safety in urban India.

Revisiting the Role of Women in Photography: The New Woman Behind the Camera

Sukanya Baskar Apr 06, 2021

The New Woman Behind the Camera is an upcoming travelling exhibition—set to open at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in July—which explores how women emerged as a driving force in modern photography from the 1920s to the 1950s.

Photography as Protest: Anoli Perera’s I Let My Hair Loose

Ketaki Varma Apr 18, 2021

Perera seems to offer this photo-performance as a form of protest against the male gaze.

Communities of Image-Making: On Sayeeda Khanam and Photojournalism

Ankan Kazi Apr 26, 2021

A magazine like Begum, with which Sayeeda Khanam was associated for over fifty years, should be seen as a spiraling index into the world of female, predominantly Muslim literary giants in Bengali.

Conditions of Visibility: Reading R. Srivatsan’s Essays

Ankan Kazi May 07, 2021

The essays that make up the volume Conditions of Visibility (2000) form a set of related inquiries into the nature of contemporary image practices in complex inter-relationships with the growing consumer markets in India, state patronage and modernist aesthetics.

People of Sri Lanka: Lionel Wendt's Portraits

Anisha Baid May 19, 2021

Lionel Wendt was an important figure in the development of modern and contemporary art in Sri Lanka (erstwhile Ceylon) who carved an influential legacy as a photographer, concert pianist and critic in the early and mid-twentieth-century.

Disappearing into Coloured Patterns: Habiba Nowrose’s Life of Venus

Sukanya Baskar May 21, 2021

Habiba Nowrose's second, and larger suite of works, Life of Venus was recently exhibited at the Art Heritage Gallery in New Delhi as a part of a group show titled Mixed Media Musings.

Gender and the Veil: Habiba Nowrose’s Performative Portraits

Anisha Baid May 22, 2021

Habiba Nowrose's practice uses portrait photography to produce a complex reflection on the representation of gender, identity and the feminine subject.

Nizamuddin at Night: Gauri Gill Photographs Her Neighbourhood

Gulmehar Dhillon May 31, 2021

Gauri Gill, the contemporary Indian photographer, has spent nearly two decades photographing life in the everyday.

Visible Work and Invisible Bodies: P. Sainath and the People’s Archive of Rural India

Ankan Kazi Jun 07, 2021

Palagummi Sainath’s continuing engagement with a specialised language of photographic practice—where the artist effaces himself by submitting to the expression of an eloquent but invisible world of work—drives the project of People’s Archive of Rural India.

Archiving Oral Histories in Photographs: In Conversation with Diwas Raja Kc

Anisha Baid Jun 12, 2021

In this interview with Diwas Raja Kc, the head of Research and Archives at Nepal Picture Library, we delve into a discussion around the Nepal Picture Library’s archival methodology.

Sikander Begum and Her Royal Court: Looking at the Waterhouse Albums

Avrati Bhatnagar Jun 26, 2021

Not only did Sikander Begum get her official portrait taken, she also offered James Waterhouse an insight into the sartorial splendour of the royal court of Bhopal.

A Public Presence: Selected Photo-Documentation in Zubeida Agha’s Archive

Samira Bose Jun 30, 2021

In pioneering modern artist Zubeida Agha’s personal archive, we see photographs that portray Agha’s role and position in the modern art spaces of Pakistan and the international art scene.

Inheriting an Otherhood: Trauma, Domesticity and Labour in Cheryl Mukherji’s Practice

Annalisa Mansukhani Jul 02, 2021

The Last Time (2020) is a work that builds a counter-archive around a specific memory of her mother and her mental illness, structured against the normative format of the family album.

Glitz, Glamour and Guns: Codification of Gender in Showgirls of Pakistan

Sukanya Deb Jul 30, 2021

Showgirls of Pakistan, a documentary film by Saad Khan, introduces us to the contemporary world of Pakistani mujra through the performers Afreen Khan, Uzma Khan and Reema Jaan.

Performance and Evidence: The Heterogenous Image in Showgirls of Pakistan

Sukanya Deb Jul 31, 2021

In this continuing discussion on Saad Khan’s Showgirls of Pakistan, we look at how it reproduces the spectacle of 1980s Lollywood and the subsequent street and popular culture.

Illegible Histories and Sacral Margins: The Djinns of Feroz Shah Kotla

Najrin Islam Aug 02, 2021

Taha Ahmad captures the daily happenings in the alcoves of Firoz Shah Kotla through the series, A Displaced Hope, built over years with cultivated access to the events.

Experiential Extensions: On Somaya Abdelrahman's A Permanent Wound

Najrin Islam Aug 06, 2021

Somaya Abdelrahman’s series, A Permanent Wound, captures the stark reality of Female Genital Mutilation through frames, reflections and veils in monochrome.

Fast Forward’s Networks of Solidarity: Anna Fox and Maria Kapajeva on Women in Photography

Jyotsna Nambiar Aug 08, 2021

In the third episode of ASAP|Cast, we speak with Anna Fox and Maria Kapajeva from Fast Forward: Women in Photography.

Sounding the Future: Queerness and Post-Human Love in Tejal Shah’s Video Art

Annalisa Mansukhani Aug 15, 2021

Identifying as ecosexual, Tejal Shah’s interests lie in the areas of sexuality, gender and consciousness as well as exploring interspecies relationships between ecologies.

The Living Statue: Photographing Masculinity in a Body-Building Manual

Sujaan Mukherjee Sep 02, 2021

In Bengal, the early decades of the twentieth-century witnessed a rise in different strands of physical cultures. While some were professionalising older traditions of wrestling, others were drawing on indigenous practices of stick-fighting and fencing.

Documenting Folk Performances: Prantik Basu’s Bela

Ankan Kazi Sep 10, 2021

Prantik Basu’s documentary Bela focuses on the performances of a troupe of Chhau dancers, called the Manbhum Sramjibi Chhau Nritya Dal.

The Shining and Other Stories: Images in Fiza Khatri’s Paintings

Veeranganakumari Solanki Sep 17, 2021

Fiza Khatri’s paintings—as portraits of the artist’s life—weave in elements of her experiences with queerness in everyday activities and communities.

Twisting with the Image: Farida Batool on Experiencing Photographs

Veeranganakumari Solanki Sep 23, 2021

Artist Farida Batool has been exploring the experience of the image and its movement through lenticular prints or 3D holographic photographs since 2006.

Wandering the City: Farida Batool on History and Practice

Veeranganakumari Solanki Sep 24, 2021

For Lahore-based artist, Farida Batool, her city has been an integral part of her research and work.

Sometimes Magic Looks Like This: Narrative Threads in Eight Thirty’s Works

Veeranganakumari Solanki Sep 25, 2021

On 2 October 2020, nine women photographers gathered over a Zoom call initiated by Riti Sengupta. This included Adira Thekkuveettil, Divya Cowasji, Kirthana Devdas, Menty Jamir, Mithila Jariwala, Pavithra Ramanujam, Vinita Barretto and Zahra Amiruddin.

Learning to See: Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Afghan Alphabet

Ankan Kazi Sep 28, 2021

Mohsen Makhmalbaf shot Afghan Alphabet late in the year 2001 after Kandahar had been screened at the Cannes Film Festival and then across European and American theatres.

Attachments from Time: Lens and Gender in Tayeba Begum Lipi’s Practice

Veeranganakumari Solanki Sep 29, 2021

For Dhaka-based artist, Tayeba Begum Lipi, the various mediums she uses in her expansive practice have been a translation of her lived experiences.

Anonya: Tayeba Begum Lipi’s Work with Dhaka's Transgender Community

Veeranganakumari Solanki Sep 30, 2021

One of the founding members of Dhaka’s Britto Arts Trust in 2002, Tayeba Begums Lipi’s work explores the body as a site—locating the performativity of gender within social expectations.

Selfhood and Symbolic Excess: On Bunu Dhungana’s Confrontations

Najrin Islam Oct 01, 2021

Menstruation is a potent taboo in many South Asian communities—a biological imperative rendered “impure” by fact of its occurrence and visibility.

An Embattled Territory: On Afghan Cinema and Roya Sadat’s Feminist Gaze

Najrin Islam Oct 09, 2021

Roya Sadat’s first film, Seh Noktah (2003), was penned clandestinely during the Taliban era. It was converted into a film after their fall, using equipment borrowed from journalists.

Women of the Sea: Palani Kumar Documents the Seaweed Farmers of Tamil Nadu

Gulmehar Dhillon Oct 20, 2021

In 2019, during a fellowship with the PARI, M. Palani Kumar, a photographer from Madurai, headed to the sea with seaweed harvesters from Bharathinagar, near Mayakulam village of Thiruppullani block.

Peripheral Lives: Borderlands by Samarth Mahajan

Niyati Bhat Nov 09, 2021

Directed by Samarth Mahajan, Borderlands bears witness to the experiences of six characters and how they navigate personal, societal and political borders in the everyday.

Impulses in Institutional Archives: A Panel Discussion on Archival Futures

Samira Bose Dec 14, 2021

Can the structure of archives contain, represent and render anti-institutional impulses and counter-cultural histories?

Framing Interiority: Medical Imaging in VAICA’s Fields of Vision

Mallika Visvanathan Dec 31, 2021

In Failure of an Unplanned, Khushbu Patel employs the medical imaging of a Transvaginal Ultrasound Scan of a human foetus.

As Light as a Husk: Pallavi Paul’s Walking as Alibi: The Dreams of Cynthia

Arushi Vats Feb 17, 2022

About ten minutes into Pallavi Paul’s online performance Walking as Alibi, a string of voices begin humming haunting tunes as the screen flashes a dictum repeatedly: “Think of a lullaby, Now hum it to yourself.”

Floating Imaginations: Afrah Shafiq’s Sultana’s Reality

Samira Bose Mar 14, 2022

Sultana’s Reality (2017) is an interactive multimedia work that draws on artist and illustrator Afrah Shafiq’s time spent in the archives at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta.

Feminist Geographies: On Indu Antony’s Practice

Najrin Islam May 11, 2022

At the talk "The Power of Art" at IAF 2022, Antony spoke about two of her projects in particular: Cecilia’ed and Namma Katte, with regard to creating a “feminist geography” (Pamela Moss) in practice.

About/Despite/Besides Love: On Archana Phadke’s Inward Gaze

Najrin Islam Jul 18, 2022

About Love focuses its lens on the Phadke family in all their idiosyncrasies, as the director straddles the role of filmmaker, daughter and sibling during the course of its making for over three years.

Interrupting the Archive: Renluka Maharaj on Indentureship and Historical Revisions

Najrin Islam Jul 26, 2022

Renluka Maharaj talks about using her work to bypass mainstream historiography and counter the imperialist rhetoric of indenture through subversive strategies of excess.

Reclaiming the “Coolie Belle”: On Renluka Maharaj’s Pelting Mangoes

Najrin Islam Jul 28, 2022

On her discovery of French photographer Felix Morin’s portraiture work on the Indo-Caribbean “Coolie Belles”, Maharaj observed signs of staging that were apparent in the repeated use of clothing and jewellery across the postcards, revealing thus several asymmetries of power.

Alternating Currents: On Writing with Fire

Ankan Kazi Aug 01, 2022

Writing with Fire focuses on a crucial moment of transition as Khabar Lahariya prepares to “go digital” after 2016. Harnessing technological change requires a complex negotiation between social capital, access and educational privilege—and these rural reporters are occasionally taught by city-based feminists about such crucial changes—all of which is on powerful display in the film’s narrative.

Projecting the Gaze: A Conversation with Sibi Sekar

Ankan Kazi Aug 25, 2022

While Sibi Sekar’s short experimental feature You Are, I Am has been previously discussed, the filmmaker also spoke to Ankan Kazi about some of the influences underlying his work of developing a critical cinematic gaze to refuse the normative framework of the visual pleasure in looking.

A Feminist Memory Project: Women in the Public Sphere

Sukanya Deb Dec 12, 2022

The Feminist Memory Project, curated by Diwas Raja KC and NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati of the Nepal Picture Library, details the public and political lives of women in Nepal in the twentieth century.

Parijat, the Nepalese Literary Figure: Through the Interiors

Sukanya Deb Mar 27, 2023

This album looks at Parijat, a renowned literary and cultural figure, and her home, which became the centre of Kathmandu’s intellectual and cultural life in the 1960s and beyond.

Ways Out of Auteurism: The Fate of Filmmaking Collectives

Ankan Kazi Apr 07, 2023

In the popular consciousness of film audiences, the regime of studio-era productions—where the authorship of decision-making was controlled by producers and directors—was followed by the era of auteurism.

On Collective Documentary Practices: Ektara Collective’s Ek Jagah Apni

Ankan Kazi Apr 08, 2023

The film resurrects debates around filmmaking collectives at the level of decentralised production and at an allegorical level, where the collectivist spirit leaves a mark on the narrative of the film.

At Home in the World: The Archive of Navina Sundaram

Shivani Kasumra Apr 10, 2023

The Fifth Wall archive was launched amidst spirited discussions around decolonisation, public access and archival imaginaries.

A Living Archive: The Fifth Wall and Feminist Archiving Practices

Madhubanti De Apr 12, 2023

Conceptualised by Merle Kröger and Mareike Bernien, along with Navina Sundaram, within the framework of Archive außer sich (Archives Beside Themselves), The Fifth Wall proposes itself as a model for future archival practice.

An Event and Its Recalls: Evocations by The Fifth Wall

Stuti Bhavsar Apr 14, 2023

In a screening of The Fifth Wall held at the Goethe-Institut, Bangalore, Merle Kröger introduced the collection using the axis of media ethics and political potentials by presenting excerpts of films, letters, texts and commentaries.

Contesting Identities: In Conversation with Minal Naomi Wickrematunge

Pramodha Weerasekera May 03, 2023

In this conversation, Wickrematunge discusses her series Tambi (2020) about her grand-uncle, Tambimuttu. She also discusses an untitled series made in the same year about Minnette de Silva.

Images in Transit: Bharat Sikka’s Waiting for Midnight

Santasil Mallik Jun 21, 2023

The work constitutes sixty photographs as an ode to the Goan village of Salvador do Mundo taken over the past fifteen years with a vintage Polaroid SX 70, reportedly the world's first instant SLR camera.

This Cup of Spilt Memory: Soumya Sankar Bose’s A Discreet Exit through Darkness

Annalisa Mansukhani Jul 04, 2023

Working with the mediums of moving image and virtual reality, Bose crafts an immersive environment for his viewers, inviting them to “enter” the fugue-like narrative of his past to find and piece together parts of a dream that cannot be grasped in its entirety.

(Dis)Embarking Across Time: A Conversation with Soumya Sankar Bose

Annalisa Mansukhani Jul 05, 2023

In this continuing conversation with Soumya Sankar Bose, the artist discusses the concerns that drive his practice, experimenting with virtual reality (VR) and the exhibition site as it transforms both the viewer and the artist.

Close to Home: On Riti Sengupta’s Things I can’t say out loud

Sukanya Baskar Jul 10, 2023

The series expresses the artist’s conflicting emotions upon returning to her childhood home after a period of eight years. Her unease emerged primarily from the disparity between the roles assigned to men and women within the household.

Curating the Contemporary Photograph: Tanvi Mishra on Moving Definitions | An Invitation To Re-View

Sukanya Baskar Jul 13, 2023

The exhibition collectively presents a series of strategies that challenge and complicate a monolithic interpretation, highlighting the significant role of personal memory and contextual interpretation as essential lenses for engaging with them.

Seventy-Two Ways to Say Memphis: Intimacy and Loneliness in The Eddies

Kshiraja Jul 31, 2023

With its juxtaposition of past and present, aboveground and underground, personal and spatial, The Eddies paints a picture not just of human desire and belonging but of the many different kinds of being.

Images of Illusion: In Conversation with Irushi Tennekoon

Pramodha Weerasekera Aug 07, 2023

In this conversation, Sri Lankan artist, illustrator and filmmaker Irushi Tennekoon delves into her practice, her fascination with stop motion and the manner in which the medium lends itself to creative storytelling.

All the World’s a Stage: On The Chapal Bhaduri Story

Ankita Ghosh Aug 25, 2023

The Chapal Bhaduri Story, with a run time of 44 minutes, shines a light not only on what it takes to physically transition into character each evening but also on the inherent performance of gender when it comes to theatre and, above all, life outside of conventional society.

Come Over for a Drink, Kanchhi: On Communal Histories of Alcohol

Shranup Tandukar Aug 28, 2023

The film presents a nuanced portrayal of economic, social, cultural and religious factors that contribute to alcohol dependence in Nepali communities, especially those living precariously on the razor’s edge of poverty.

The Cycle of Motherhood: On Before You Were My Mother

Shranup Tandukar Aug 30, 2023

The film offers a heart-touching tale of mothers and daughters as they struggle against conflicts, social norms and generational gaps to mend their wounds and understand each other better.

Spectral Resurgence: Silent Cinema in Asif Kapadia and Akram Khan’s Creature

Sanjita Majumder Oct 03, 2023

Creature is a film devised under the impetus of “pure cinema”, which emphasises technical exploration in the creation of a narrative, without the aid of speech, language or dialogue.

Postcolonial Gestures: Cultural Transference in Creature

Sanjita Majumder Oct 04, 2023

Asif Kapadia’s cinematic capture of the gestures and choreographies of movements in Creature explores the terrain of fusing Indian classical forms with Western ballet.

A Love Letter in Camera: And, Towards Happy Alleys by Sreemoyee Singh

Santasil Mallik Nov 09, 2023

There is an atmospheric playfulness, laughter and some happy accidents in the filmmaker’s interactions with her subjects, which are not devoid of a critical reflection of Iran’s regressive political regime. Such moments manifest briskly in the film.

Serendipity Arles Grant 2023-24: Image-Making as Social-Political-Personal Praxis

Arundhati Chauhan Dec 23, 2023

Spanning deeply personal narratives of memory, identity, migration and loss, the second iteration of the Serendipity Arles Grant for 2023-24 reflects the multivalent testimonials to image-making.

Begrudging Solidarities: On Dhorpatan (No Winter Holidays)

Shranup Tandukar Jan 25, 2024

In their meditative feature-length documentary Dhorpatan (No Winter Holidays, 2023), Rajan Kathet and Sunir Pandey follow two women, Ratima and Kalima, as they try to survive winter in a village that is otherwise completely empty.

Cycles of Labour: On Meelon Dur by Megha Acharya

Kamayani Sharma Jan 26, 2024

In Meelon Dur, we see workers partaking in pleasures such as buying anklets and flying kites. By chronicling this free time of brick workers, among the most exploited workers in India’s labour sector, the documentary offers a critique of the material regime circumscribing their lives.

Archiving the Corporeal: Zahra Yazdani’s Beautiful and Grotesque Bodies

Shankar Tripathi Feb 05, 2024

Scripted Selves: Sutures of Signs and Symbols, Zahra Yazdani's ongoing solo exhibition at Latitude 28 in New Delhi, is a hypnotic reimagination of the body as overridden with imperceptibility and fiction.

Reading the Body: In Conversation with Sandeep TK

Mallika Visvanathan Feb 26, 2024

In this edited interview, artist Sandeep TK speaks about how he developed his practice, his approach to photoperformance, engaging with forms of representation and critically examining the world around him.

Expanded Cinemas, Archival Possibilities: Josef Wirsching and Early Film Histories

Arundhati Chauhan Mar 13, 2024

The archive presents larger questions around the photographic image, the visual influences in the staged images of the actors on set to the mise-en-scene captured by Wirsching, as well as questions of infrastructural archive building.

Other Worlds Within: Arhant Shrestha’s Between Space and Memory

Alfa M. Shakya Apr 11, 2024

Arhant Shrestha’s photographs construct, through an almost childlike wonder and mysticism, an identity of the city he inhabits and what it means to him. This album includes selections from his series Between Space and Memory (2021–), presenting a coming-of-age through the interiority of family and the discovery of a city.

Women in the Emergency: Socialist India and the Depiction of Women

Ankan Kazi Apr 18, 2024

Gemma Scott explores the role of photographs in the Emergency that sought to mobilise women’s support for Indira Gandhi, her party and the state’s repressive measures, which were repeatedly justified as having been undertaken to protect the rights of “minorities” in the country.

At Five in the Afternoon: Colonial Wars and (in) the Slippage of History

Radhika Saraf Apr 25, 2024

Iranian filmmaker Samira Makhmalbaf’s film At Five in the Afternoon (2003) tells the story of a young woman’s ambition for an education in Afghanistan, set against the backdrop of the American invasion against the Taliban in 2001.

The Undead Child: Samira Makhmalbaf’s At Five in the Afternoon

Radhika Saraf Apr 26, 2024

Reading this film in the present is a reminder of the undead, the not-yet-dead, the children under the rubble in Gaza—faced with bombs and death in Jabalia, Al-Maghazi and Nuseirat refugee camps, with “barely a drop (of water) to drink” as per UNICEF estimates—that offer the condition for resistance, by asking us as citizens to consider their humanity not as exception, but as foundational to our being in the world.

The Doctor Will See You Now: Love and Grief in Komal Mistri’s Photographs

Shankar Tripathi May 04, 2024

Komal Mistri’s photographs—assemblages that memorialise the lives of her subjects through ephemeral objects—are ineffably haunting.

A March for Rights, Life and Existence: This Stained Dawn by Anam Abbas

Banhi Sarkar May 07, 2024

Chronicling the genesis of feminist struggles in Pakistan in the first three minutes of the documentary—starting from the rise of Independence against British imperialism in the early 1940s to the fall of the Benazir Bhutto government in the 1980s—This Stained Dawn (2021) by Anam Abbas begins with a riveting start.

Legacy Threads: Reading History through the NE India AV Archive

Ankita Ghosh May 14, 2024

Legacy Threads, a group exhibition presented by the Northeast India AV Archive and curated by D. Junisha Khongwir weaves together a story told through family photographs and community archives, and spotlights the vibrant history of the diverse communities based in the region.

Cinematic Apparatus as Altering Reality: Partition, Communalism and Gender in Bombay

Akash Sarraf Jun 14, 2024

The cinematic apparatus theory suggests that films are deeply embedded with ideological and psychological implications that try to reinforce certain beliefs and promote ideas. Mani Ratnam's Bombay (1995), in that sense, aims to present a constructed reality through orchestrated gazes, edits, camerawork and an emotionally charged narrative.

Re-Viewing Company Painting: Charan Singh’s Queer Lens

Upasana Das Jun 19, 2024

In his first solo exhibition, The Promise of Beauty, at The Art House, UK, Charan Singh reinterprets company paintings from a queer point of view. Often collaborating with his partner, the photographer Sunil Gupta, Singh works across photography, video and text.

Resonant Shells, Animated Bodies: Natasha Malik’s Film Experiments

Pramodha Weerasekera Jun 24, 2024

Natasha Malik’s experimental film The mirror gazed inward and caught a brief glimpse of another life in an illusion of infinite, in the eye of a dream. (2022) attempts to animate her painting a swim through time, concluded (2022).

In Solitary Confinement: Safe Haven by Gopa Trivedi

Pramodha Weerasekera Jul 02, 2024

Safe Haven is an extension of Gopa Trivedi’s previous work, exploring notions of home, which the artist presents as a state close to solitary confinement in prison, of zero physical or social engagement with the outside world. Home thus becomes a kind of incarceration, which often leads inmates to develop psychological ailments.

Music, Night, Life: In Conversation with Shahbano Farid

Upasana Das Jul 10, 2024

In her documentary Karachi at Night (2024), Shahbano Farid ventures into the underground music scene in Karachi, in conversation with musicians and DJs, and uncovers how this world functions even when it becomes difficult to thrive independently, while the fight to sustain the scene must always continue. In the first part of an edited conversation, Farid takes us through her motivations for documenting the nightlife and underground music subcultures in Karachi.

Documenting the Night: Shahbano Farid On Karachi’s Underground Music Culture

Upasana Das Jul 11, 2024

In this edited conversation, Shahbano Farid talks about the process of speaking with the artists and the histories of Karachi’s own music scene, which she attempts to capture in her documentary Karachi at Night (2024).

Divergent Trails: Prasanna Vithanage's Paradise

Sucheta Chakraborty Aug 07, 2024

The sense of disconnect that works its way into Prasanna Vithanage's Paradise finds its sharpest delineation in manner which the same thing in the film comes to hold radically different meanings for different groups of people in Sri Lanka.

A Satire of Patriarchy: Examining Kathal - A Jackfruit Mystery

Akash Sarraf Aug 12, 2024

Kathal - A Jackfruit Mystery (2023), directed by Yashowardhan Mishra, stars Sanya Malhotra as inspector Mahima Basoor in the hinterland of the Bundelkhand region in north and central India. The film offers a satirical take on the nature of bureaucracy, politics and the police procedural through its insipid and dry humour.

The Dimensions of Memory: Nostalgia for the Light by Patricio Guzmán

Annalisa Mansukhani Aug 22, 2024

Nostalgia for the Light (2010), by Patricio Guzmán, follows the aftermath and impact of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's regime from 1973–90. Through his resolute narration, Guzmán’s documentary introduces us to the search for a past unravelling in the Atacama Desert in the 1970s.

Engaging with the Surface: Materiality, Memories and the Digital in Sheetal Mallar’s Braided

Pronita Tripathi Aug 28, 2024

Sheetal Mallar’s series Braided (2023), in many ways, is an exploration of the afterlife of the family album, in the form of the photobook in the digital age.

Modes of Self Reflection: On the Genre-Fluid Essay Film

Anoushka Antonnette Mathews Sep 09, 2024

Beyond Story: Encounters with Essay Films, organised over the weekend of 23–25 August 2024, explored the alternate world of essay films.

Eat Your Mother and Father: A Talk by Yashaswini Raghunandan

Anoushka Antonnette Mathews Sep 11, 2024

Presented as part of Beyond Story: Encounters with Essay Films at the Bangalore International Centre, Bengaluru-based filmmaker Yashaswini Raghunandan’s talk “Eat Your Mother and Father”—the title inspired by John Waters’ film Eat Your Makeup (1966)—discussed the interactions between personal and essay films.

Farming the Revolution: Documentary Filmmaking as an Organising Tool

Kshiraja Oct 01, 2024

Farming the Revolution is remarkable not only in the documentation of the farmers’ protests, but in the way it relates to the movement itself and the possibilities it holds in terms of creative strategies of building and mobilising solidarity.

On Three Promises: The Palestinians’ Right to a Remembered Presence

Kshiraja Oct 16, 2024

With its non-linear editing of home-video footage tapes and present-day conversations underscored by the timestamps that hallmark the frames, Yousef Srouji’s film Three Promises (2023) reads to the audience like memory in itself, one that is kept hidden away and comes back sometimes in fragments, but all at the same time.

In Person: Taak by Udit Khurana

Mallika Visvanathan Nov 18, 2024

In this episode of In Person, Udit Khurana speaks about his directorial vision for his film Taak (Tracker, 2024), the heightened reality that is engendered by the very presence of a camera, the effect on mental health due to the technologically determined nature of the gig economy, the invasiveness of society’s gaze upon women, the multiple cities that exist simultaneously in Delhi and the experience of screening his film at DIFF.

In Person: Chaware by Jhansy Giting Dokgre Marak

Mallika Visvanathan Nov 20, 2024

Jhansy Giting Dokre Marak’s film Chaware (Son-in-Law, 2023) looks at the experience of a young man who moves in to live with his wife’s family after the wedding, following the norms of Garo society. In this episode of In Person, Marak speaks about why she wanted to make this film, her process and research, understanding what it means to be a part of a matrilineal society, the importance of food in all communities, her wish to make films for her own community and her experience of screening the film at DIFF.

On Marching in the Dark: In Conversation with Kinshuk Surjan

Mallika Visvanathan Nov 27, 2024

In this edited interview, director Kinshuk Surjan speaks to us about why he made his film Marching in the Dark (2024), some of the challenges he faced, taking an observational approach and the importance of community for the farmer widows.

A Tradition of Resilience: Aditi Maddali’s Songs of Our Soil

Vishal George Nov 29, 2024

Aditi Maddali’s Songs of Our Soil (Pani Paata Poratam, 2019), supported by a grant from IFA under the Arts Research Programme is a result of her extensive research on the women of Telangana and the agricultural tradition of Uyyala songs which express their resilience and resistance.

Foregrounding the Background: Of Dancers, Princely States and Unwritten Histories

Anoushka Antonnette Mathews Dec 02, 2024

On 27 October 2024, Siddhi Goel and C. Yamini Krishna made presentations as part of the panel: “Forgotten Genres, Publics and Practices: The Understated Ecosystem of Indian Cinema” at IFA’s Past Forward: The Pleasure, Purpose and Practice of Arts Research. The presentation by Goel on the ecosystem of background Kathak dancers in the Bombay film industry and Krishna on the scant histories of films from the princely states illustrated cinema beyond the mainstream to uncover narratives and histories that have been relegated to the margins.

Reading Between the Signs: On Niharika Popli's If I Could Tell You

Anoushka Antonnette Mathews Dec 19, 2024

Screening at the 9th edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival, If I Could Tell You (2024) by Niharika Popli explores the lives of Surbhi and Charu, two working women from Delhi navigating the intersection of hearing and deafness. Charu, a deaf woman, grew up with a deaf sister in a hearing family, while Surbhi, a hearing woman, was raised by deaf parents with Indian Sign Language as her first language.

The Measure of Value: Daughter of the Sea

Radhika Jan 02, 2025

Screened at the 9th edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival held in Goa from 15-22 December 2024, Nicole Gormley and Nancy Kwon’s 18-minute documentary Daughter of the Sea: Sisterhood in the Sea is a deeply moving and intimate account of the alienation caused by capital’s imperative of competition.

Curatorial Practice at the Chennai Photo Biennale

Mallika Visvanathan Jan 04, 2025

The fourth edition of the Chennai Photo Biennale (CPB) with the theme “Why Photograph?” recently launched the first of its three phases in December 2024, and will be on display till March 2025 in various locations across Chennai. Mallika Visvanathan spoke to the curators of the primary shows about their vision and the insights they have acquired in reflecting on the biennale’s provocation.

On Power and Representation at the Chennai Photo Biennale

Upasana Das Jan 09, 2025

The Chennai Photo Biennale features artists examining themes of power and representation, including gender, identity and violence. Upasana Das speaks to these artists as they reflect on how their works question traditional power structures and give voice to marginalised perspectives.

Landscape and History at the Chennai Photo Biennale

Kshiraja Jan 15, 2025

The fourth edition of the Chennai Photo Biennale (CPB) emphatically platforms artists who, through their practice, seek to challenge dominant narratives in visual representation. Kshiraja interviews three of the CPB's featured artists pursuing these lines of inquiry through their practices by establishing landscapes as a repository of personal and collective histories.

Archives of Our Own: Studying the Family Photograph in India

Shankar Tripathi Jan 21, 2025

Framing Portraits, Binding Albums edited by Shilpi Goswami and Suryanandini Narain, attempts to discursively challenge a fixed understanding of family photographs in the Indian context.

Bodies and Landscapes at the Chennai Photo Biennale

Anoushka Antonnette Mathews Jan 25, 2025

At the Chennai Photo Biennale 2025, photographs become portals of possibilities as they blur the line between the subject and creator. Beyond asking “Why photograph”, we are led to the questions—“Who photographs?” and “who is photographed?”

Coastal Commons: Fisherwomen’s Struggle for Dignity

Nithya K Jan 28, 2025

Porambokku, or the commons, refers to land and water bodies controlled by local communities, serving as vital resources for sustenance. In plain sight, any common—be it agricultural or coastal—may appear to represent the community’s shared space. However, a closer look reveals the intricate influence of socio-cultural factors like caste, religion, class and gender in negotiating the power dynamics that determine who truly controls and benefits from these spaces and who is able to access these spaces and share its resources.

Myth, Ritual and Identity at the Chennai Photo Biennale

Kshiraja Jan 30, 2025

Through a rumination of the creative and photographic process, the fourth Chennai Photo Biennale (CPB) gives shape to narratives around the visual production of identity. Five featured artists seek to unravel the threads of cultural identity through themes of myth and ritual in their practice.

Poulomi Desai: Race, Community and Image-Making

Upasana Das Feb 03, 2025

Poulomi Desai’s oeuvre moves between the performative and the visual—her first ‘artistic’ experience was at poetry readings, where she was taken by her politically engaged mother, where she did “rant-y” recitations inspired by punk. After moving from Hackney to Harrow—a hotbed of racist activities with the far-right group, the National Front, close to Harrow—she was on the lookout for community.

Noise, Performance and Protest: On Poulomi Desai's Music Practice

Upasana Das Feb 04, 2025

Growing up, Poulomi Desai was surrounded by classical and folk music from India, especially considering the popularity of Ravi Shankar and The Beatles using the sitar in their songs or The Rolling Stones’ “Paint it Black.” She became involved with post-punk and their political strain with bands like Crass, and then with a Sikh hip-hop group called Hustlers in the 1990s, for whom she designed record covers.

Community Building at the Chennai Photo Biennale

Upasana Das Feb 07, 2025

Photographers have often collectively worked with a creative community to develop their practice or worked with particular groups of people to facilitate their expression. This year, the Chennai Photo Biennale (CPB) highlights the works of photographers building a community and creating work from it.

Seeking Hope: Resistance in 'Like Air, I’ll Rise'

Ankita Ghosh Feb 11, 2025

Like Air, I’ll Rise, Experimenter’s last exhibition at Ballygunge Place, takes its name from Maya Angelou’s much-quoted poem as an homage to the writer and activist’s role within the women’s rights movement.

Mental Health and Neurodivergence at Chennai Photo Biennale

Anoushka Antonnette Mathews Feb 13, 2025

At the fourth edition of the Chennai Photo Biennale, photographs become biographies, helping us reflect on mental health and neurodivergence and its connection to the process of image making.

On All We Imagine as Light: Caste Hindu Endogamy and the Possibilities of Love

Ria De and Koonal Duggal Feb 18, 2025

Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light (AWIAL) (2024) is about the lives of three migrant women nurses and the ways in which they form community and solidarity with each other in the backdrop of the city life of Mumbai. It engages the politics of love and caste endogamy and that of migrant labour, as well as who can be a state and city subject and who cannot.

On Humans in the Loop: In Conversation with Aranya Sahay

Koyna Tomar Feb 21, 2025

Humans in the Loop (2024) by Aranya Sahay tells the story of Nehma, an Oraon woman, who returns to her village in Jharkhand following the breakdown of her marriage with a non-Adivasi man, as she begins to make sense of her new life in a familiar place. To retain custody and raise her two children, Nehma takes an unusual job as a ‘data labeller’ at an Artificial Intelligence (AI) data centre.

On the Emotional Logic in Humans in the Loop: In Conversation with Aranya Sahay

Koyna Tomar Feb 22, 2025

In the second part of this continuing conversation with Aranya Sahay, the writer and director of Humans in the Loop (2024) talks about the process behind writing the film's central characters and his decision to focus on interpersonal relationships. Sahay shares how his interactions with Adivasi communities, including storytellers and musicians, informed the film-making process and discusses the audience he has in mind while working on a film project.

Representations of Labour at the Chennai Photo Biennale

Vishal George Feb 25, 2025

What is the capacity of photography to capture labour? What stories can pictures tell us about labouring bodies? Wielding a camera helps understand relations of labour in our social milieu while also indicating one’s own labour. Four projects featured at the Chennai Photo Biennale reflect further upon the theme of labour present in their works.

Framing Urban Landscapes at the Chennai Photo Biennale

Vishal George Mar 03, 2025

As our urban landscapes continuously undergo transformations, can art help reconcile what we lose in the process? Artists at the Chennai Photo Biennale turn their gaze towards and into their urban environments to capture the weaving of memory, humour, intimacy, culture and belonging.

A Shared Place Between Memory and History: Nimi Ravindran’s Exhibition-Performance

Aparna Chivukula Mar 05, 2025

To Forget is to Remember is to Forget, Ravindran’s exhibition-performance which had its tenth iteration last month at the Goethe-Institut in Bengaluru uses video, sound, photo and print installations as well as a storytelling performance to explore personal and public memory.

Fragments of Memory at the Chennai Photo Biennale

Mallika Visvanathan Mar 07, 2025

Given the crucial role photography plays as an aid for memory, it also raises important questions about our engagement with the past, present and future. Artists at the Chennai Photo Biennale reflect on the ways in which memory and meaning are influenced by time and space in their practice.

Frissons of a Novel Kind: The Sher-Gil Family Archive

Pronita Tripathi Mar 10, 2025

Pronita Tripathi delves into the ongoing exhibition "A Hungarian-Indian Family of Artists: Master and Disciple" at Jaipur House, the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), on view from 31 January–31 March 2025, and discusses the depiction of leisure in the vast photographic archives of the Sher-Gil family.

Cycles of Enclosure: Caste, Class and the Unequal Marriage “Market” in Jayant Somalkar’s Sthal

Sucheta Chakraborty Mar 21, 2025

Premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2023, where it won the NETPAC award for best film from the Asia-Pacific region, Jayant Somalkar’s Marathi film Sthal (A Match) develops in between iterations of the ‘kanda-poha’ programme—formal meetings for bride selection that take their name from the popular Maharashtrian snack that is typically served in such situations

Pink Revolution: Nishtha Jain's Gulabi Gang

Anoushka Antonnette Mathews Mar 22, 2025

This Women’s Day, Bangalore International Centre organised a screening of Nishtha Jain’s 2014 film Gulabi Gang. Amidst the ongoing ‘celebrations’ and many shades of pink on display, Gulabi Gang stands as a stark reminder of the inequalities that exist not only between men and women on the basis of gender but also between women themselves, given the vast differentials in socio-economic realities, i.e., between rural and urban, upper caste and Dalit-Bahujan, Hindu and Muslim and so on.

Fragmented Memory and Personal History: On Reena Mohan’s ‘Kamlabai’

Akshay Shelar Mar 26, 2025

The film Kamlabai (1992), directed by Reena Mohan, was screened at the NFDC-National Film Archives of India (as a part of the Film Circle screenings) on 8 March 2025. Mohan’s conversations with Kamlabai Gokhale, considered the first lady of Indian cinema, form the basis of this documentary.