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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 Sahmat Collective: Art and Activism in India since 1989

Arushi Vats Jan 18, 2021

A landmark event presenting an exhaustive survey of the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (Sahmat)’s history and practices since its formation in 1989, the exhibition drew upon photographs as evidentiary and illustrative documents.

Truth to Power: Shahidul Alam at Rubin Museum of Art

Gulmehar Dhillon Jan 18, 2021

Rubin Museum of Art, New York opened the exhibition Shahidul Alam: Truth to Power on 8 November 2019 following his incarceration.

The Disowned and the Denied: Saiful Huq Omi’s Documentation of the Exiled Community

Gulmehar Dhillon Feb 08, 2021

Saiful Huq Omi has documented the Rohingyas in exile around the world—in the camps of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, the cramped underground spaces of Malaysia and the hopeful streets of England.

On Art as Collective Action: An Interview with NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati

Ketaki Varma Jan 01, 1970

Founder of photo.circle, co-founder of Nepal Picture Library and Director of Photo Kathmandu, NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati has been instrumental in establishing Kathmandu and (broadly) Nepal as a cultural hub for image-based practices within South Asia.

A Transnational Revolutionary: Dr Savitri Sawhney on her father Pandurang Khankhoje

Anisha Baid Jan 19, 2021

Pandurang Khankhoje’s work at the agricultural school in Mexico is survived by many photographs taken by the celebrated photographer Tina Modotti.

The Silence of “Others”: Bharat Choudhary’s Exploration of Young Muslim Lives

Gulmehar Dhillon Feb 09, 2021

The project documents the emotional struggles of Muslim youth in the West as they confront negative perceptions and discrimination.

The Agrarian Revolution and Tina Modotti: In Conversation with Dr Savitri Sawhney

Anisha Baid Feb 09, 2021

In this continuing conversation with Savitri Sawhney, we dwell on Pandurang Khankhoje’s work as an agrarian–responsible for the establishment of more than thirty free agricultural schools in Mexico.

Finding Archives Where There Are None: Documenting a Displaced Existence in the Forests of Chitwan

Anisha Baid Feb 10, 2021

As an online presentation of sustained anthropological and photographic research, the website provokes the documentary modality, weaving together the various social realities of a wounded landscape.

Indigenous Pasts, Sustainable Futures: Images from The Skin of Chitwan

Anisha Baid Feb 10, 2021

The Skin of Chitwan, an online exhibition by the Nepal Picture Library is a manifestation of the ongoing research project Indigenous Pasts, Sustainable Futures that attempts to document, archive and share Nepal’s marginalised histories.

Seeding New Visions: A Reflection on Munem Wasif's Seeds Shall Set Us Free II

Ankan Kazi Feb 10, 2021

Exhibited at the Centre Pompidou and Taipei Biennial 2019, Seeds Shall Set Us Free II represents another move toward consolidating the core themes in the work of the photographer Munem Wasif.

Koodankulam: Amirtharaj Stephen’s Documentation of the Protests

Gulmehar Dhillon Feb 15, 2021

Amirtharaj Stephen’s set of photographs titled Koodankulam: In My Backyard documents the protests by the local community against the Indian and Russian Governments' commissioning of the Koodankulam power plant.

Road Trips Project: Redefining the Canon

Jennifer Chowdhry Biswas Feb 17, 2021

Romanticised in modern literature—primarily by white men—as a metaphor for freedom and adventure, road trips are almost a rite of passage for Americans.

Expanding the Documentary: In Conversation with Ashfika Rahman

Anisha Baid Feb 19, 2021

In the first episode of this two-part interview, we delve into Ashfika Rahman's process as a documentary photographer and as an artist, examining the shifting boundaries between these modalities of practice.

Photography as Journal: An Interview with Ashfika Rahman

Anisha Baid Feb 20, 2021

In this conversation, Rahman emphasises the potential for photography to be more than benign documentation, by becoming an activator and catalyst for social change.

Yangon Photo Festival: A Platform for Advocacy

Anisha Baid Feb 23, 2021

Yangon Photo Festival is organised annually by the PhotoDoc Association, which works in Myanmar to build the capacity of journalists, civil society organisations and vulnerable groups to investigate, document and report on social justice and environmental issues.

On Witness: An Interview with Sanjay Kak

Senjuti Mukherjee Feb 27, 2021

In this interview, Kak speaks to us about being the editor and publisher of the book Witness: Kashmir 1986-2016: Nine Photographers featuring two hundred images archiving the everyday repressive practices of the state.

Inner World of Conflict: Mayco Naing’s Portraits of Silence

Anisha Baid Mar 06, 2021

Naing’s practice emerges as a response to the repressive and totalitarian political regime that has dominated Myanmar’s recent history.

Towards an Adivasi Futurism: An Interview with Subash Thebe Limbu

Anisha Baid Mar 16, 2021

Subash Thebe Limbu is a Nepalese indigenous artist who works with sound, film, performance and painting.

Between Documentary and Speculative: An Interview with Subash Thebe Limbu

Anisha Baid Mar 17, 2021

In this continuing conversation with artist Subash Thebe Limbu, we explore the various material and mediatic negotiations involved in the movement of Indigenous Futurisms.

Sohrab Hura: The Historian, the Storyteller and the Idiot Photographer

Ketaki Varma Mar 20, 2021

Photographer Sohrab Hura’s latest exhibition Spill, recently concluded at the Experimenter Gallery in Kolkata, was aptly titled. The expansive exhibition was concerned with excavating Hura’s fifteen years of practice.

Methodologies for New Histories: Diwas Raja Kc Discusses Dalit: A Quest for Dignity

Arushi Vats Mar 22, 2021

The end pages of Dalit: A Quest for Dignity (photo.circle and Nepal Picture Library, 2018) present scenes charged with resistance.

The Question of Form: Diwas Raja Kc Discusses Dalit: A Quest for Dignity

Arushi Vats Mar 23, 2021

In 2016, Nepal Picture Library curated the exhibition Dalit: A Quest for Dignity. Presented at the Patan Museum, it showcased over eighty photographs and records archiving the Dalit experience in Nepal.

A Second Coming: Arko Datto Discusses Dinos of Hindostan

Sukanya Baskar Mar 29, 2021

In Dinos of Hindostan, Arko Datto deftly weaves elements of humour, science and current affairs to construct a world of uncanny political satire.

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.

Fabricating the Documentary Image: Shubham Kumar’s Negotiations with Violence and Representation

Anisha Baid Apr 05, 2021

Shubham Kumar is an artist from Gaya, Bihar. His practice explores the dialogue between image making and histories of violence through material engagements with painting and photography.

Resolution, Information and Memes: In Defence of the Poor Image

Anisha Baid Apr 07, 2021

Hito Steyerl, a German filmmaker, moving image artist and theorist, has written extensively about the dissemination of media artefacts in the contemporary technological landscape.

On a People's History: Suchitra Vijayan Discusses Midnight's Borders

Senjuti Mukherjee Apr 08, 2021

Lawyer, photographer and political analyst Suchitra Vijayan’s new publication Midnight’s Borders came out of her travels across 9000 miles of India’s borderlands over seven years.

The Role of Storytelling in Photography: Conversations with Ritesh Uttamchandani

Ankan Kazi Apr 10, 2021

Uttamchandani was also taken up with the question of withholding or blocking—acts of not-telling—which worked as significantly as acts of accurate reporting, since one is dealing with the lives and narratives of vulnerable people under near-constant state surveillance.

Notions of Nation: A Review of John W. Hood’s The Bleeding Lotus

Ankan Kazi Apr 15, 2021

John W. Hood’s book The Bleeding Lotus on the history of Bangladeshi nationalism on film is one of the few overviews on Bangladeshi cinema available in English.

Nationalist Cinemas of Bangladesh: A Discussion on John W. Hood’s The Bleeding Lotus

Ankan Kazi Apr 16, 2021

In this continuing discussion on John W. Hood’s The Bleeding Lotus, we focus on how his analysis foregrounds some of the important themes in Bangladesh’s nationalist cinema.

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.

From Landmass to Ocean: Conversations with Sinthujan Varatharajah

Ankan Kazi Apr 20, 2021

Traumatic histories of violently dislocated communities produce fault lines that get enjoined to the public memories of host countries—much as the diverse refugee populations would have confronted the momentous upheavals of Germany on the verge of the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

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.

Borderlands, Resistance and Archival Ethics: Conversations with Laura Saunders

Najrin Islam Apr 27, 2021

Working in Southern Arizona and South-West Virginia, Saunders discussed her work on the Mexico-United States of America borderlands, their attendant histories of migration and the narratives of criminality that they engender.

An Intimate Requiem: Alana Hunt Discusses Cups of nun chai

Senjuti Mukherjee May 01, 2021

Australian artist and writer Alana Hunt’s decade-long iterative work Cups of nun chai searches for meaning in the face of the Indian state’s absurd brutality in Kashmir.

Exhausted Geographies of Karachi: In Conversation with Abeera Kamran, Shahana Rajani and Zahra Malkani

Anisha Baid May 02, 2021

Exhausted Geographies is a Karachi-based collaborative publishing practice by Abeera Kamran, Shahana Rajani and Zahra Malkani.

The Violence of Cartography: In Conversation with the Exhausted Geographies Team

Anisha Baid May 03, 2021

In the second part of a continuing conversation with the Exhausted Geographies team, we reflect on the historically fraught process of map-making and the various methods artists use to subvert histories of violence and state power.

Countering Mainstream Narratives: A Conversation with Ishan Tankha

Ketaki Varma May 08, 2021

In the first of a two-part interview, Ishan Tankha speaks to Ketaki Varma about his work over these past two years; the challenges of documenting violence, grief and protest; and the role of social media today.

Instinct, Ethics and Image-Making: A Conversation with Ishan Tankha

Ketaki Varma May 09, 2021

In this continuing conversation with Ketaki Varma, photojournalist Ishan Tankha elaborates on the impact of the pandemic on his work and the ethics of photojournalistic practice, especially in contemporary India.

Towards a Textured Counter-Visuality: In Conversation with the Exhausted Geographies Team

Anisha Baid May 04, 2021

In this continuing conversation around Exhausted Geographies—a Karachi-based collaborative publishing practice by Abeera Kamran, Shahana Rajani and Zahra Malkani—we talk about the accompanying web project of struggle.

Photography and Pedagogical Inquiries: Conversations with Rishi Singhal

Najrin Islam May 05, 2021

As part of the Chennai Photo Biennale’s series of conversations reflecting on the practices of representation, Suchitra Vijayan spoke with photographer and educator Rishi Singhal on 29 April 2021.

Of Resistance and Memory: Picturing the Mukti Bahini

Ankan Kazi May 10, 2021

The Mukti Bahini (Liberation Army) is a collection of military, paramilitary and civilian forces that fought in the struggle for the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971.

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.

Landscapes of Loss: Retelling the Marichjhapi Massacre with Soumya Sankar Bose

Annalisa Mansukhani May 30, 2021

Soumya Sankar Bose’s photographic project Where the Birds Never Sing centres on the forgotten massacre of several hundreds of Dalit refugees by the Left Front in West Bengal’s Marichjhapi in 1979.

A Quest for Dignity: The Dalit Experience in Nepal

Gulmehar Dhillon Jun 01, 2021

Edited by Diwas Raja Kc and produced by NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati, the book (emerging from an exhibition in 2016) combines text with photographs to depict the brutality and structural injustice that the Dalit community has been subjected to over the course of Nepal’s history.

No End in Sight: Growing up in War-Torn Afghanistan

Sukanya Baskar Jun 03, 2021

The title of Aziz Hazara's solo exhibition No End in Sight is an evocation of the fatigue of a generation that grew up in a war-torn Afghanistan (that Hazara as well as the curator, Muheb Esmat belong to).

Technologies of Vision: A Conversation with Artist Aziz Hazara and Curator Muheb Esmat

Sukanya Baskar Jun 04, 2021

This conversation with artist Aziz Hazara and curator Muheb Esmat, came out of Sukanya Baskar's experience of having viewed No End in Sight (2020), an exhibition at the Hessel Museum in New York.

Traces of Occupation: Kashmir, A State of Erasure

Sukanya Deb Jun 06, 2021

“Trauma is viewed as pre-verbal and timeless—still and urgent,” reads the description of video works Nishan I (2007–12) and Nishan II (2019) by Desire Machine Collective.

Freedom on Screen: Bangladesh's Short Film as Alternative Cinema

Ankan Kazi Jun 08, 2021

The evolution of the short film form in Bangladesh reveals the traces of this struggle between filmmakers trying to wrest an autonomous form from the predations of state control.

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.

Song Narratives: Molla Sagar’s Documentary Films

Veeranganakumari Solanki Jun 25, 2021

Inspired by Ritwik Ghatak’s cinematic ideologies, Molla Sagar’s work explores cultural and ethnic practices that speak about basic human rights and injustices in everyday encounters.

Forensic Time and Territorial Dislocations: Exploring the Trauma of Exile through Google Earth

Najrin Islam Jul 24, 2021

Palestinian filmmaker and media artist Razan AlSalah takes the tool of cartography and counters its imperial roots to reinterpret optical regimes of violence.

Imagining Palestinian Statehood: Arabfuturism and the Scope of Radical Fictions

Najrin Islam Jul 25, 2021

Coined by Jordanian artist Sulaïman Majali, the term “Arabfuturism” refers to the anticipation of a future beyond the hegemonic, Eurocentric representations of the Pan-Arab world.

Photographing a Chronic Catastrophe: Rearticulating Gaza through Images

Najrin Islam Jul 26, 2021

Palestinian artists are reconstructing Gaza through images that refuse to spectacularise the violence and the archetype of the “helpless refugee”.

The Other Story: Exhibition Documentation in Rasheed Araeen’s Archive

Samira Bose Jul 27, 2021

Rasheed Araeen moved to London in the 1960s after his education in Karachi, and is considered a pioneer of minimalist sculpture in Britain.

Surveying the Settler: The Neighbour Before the House by Shaina Anand

Ankan Kazi Jul 29, 2021

Shaina Anand directed Al Jaar Qabla al Daar in which eight Palestinian families are provided with a controllable CCTV camera for a closer inspection of their neighbourhoods.

In Person: Soumya Sankar Bose on Where the Birds Never Sing

Senjuti Mukherjee Aug 03, 2021

For the fifth episode of In Person, we speak with Soumya Sankar Bose about his second solo show, Where the Birds Never Sing (2017–20) currently on view at Experimenter Gallery, Kolkata.

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.

An Index of Unfinished Histories: Mariam Ghani on Afghan Cinema

Najrin Islam Aug 13, 2021

Mariam Ghani's What We Left Unfinished interrogates the idealised Afghan national imaginary by resuscitating five unifinished films from Afghanistan's communist phase.

The (Un)Making of Memories: Piotr Cieplak’s The Faces We Lost

Annalisa Mansukhani Aug 23, 2021

In The Faces We Lost—the 2017 documentary directed and produced by Piotr Cieplak—Paul Rukesha of the Genocide Archive speaks of the incurable affliction of living through the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide.

Remembering in Rwanda: The Sanctity of the Aftermath in The Faces We Lost

Annalisa Mansukhani Aug 24, 2021

In the documentary The Faces We Lost (2017), Piotr Cieplak highlights the family album as an object retrieved from obliteration and as simultaneously retrieving memories.

A Renaissance of Walking: A Digital Symposium on Walking and Photography

Sukanya Baskar Aug 25, 2021

About Walking was a two-day symposium that investigated the social and political perspectives on what the act of walking could mean across transcultural photographic practices.

Flânerie and Photography: Walking within Different Genres of Photography

Sukanya Baskar Aug 26, 2021

Shuchi Kapoor and Marie-Kathrin Blanck discuss how photographers have conceptually woven the act of walking into their practice.

Conflict Sites and Militant Botany: Moonis Ahmad Shah’s Gul-e-Curfew

Najrin Islam Aug 31, 2021

Moonis Ahmad Shah charts a taxonomic model for botanical forms that have seemingly evolved in tandem with the constraints, dilations and extractions prevalent in contested zones.

Telegrams from a Landscape Scout: A Para-Archive of Kashmir as Image

Najrin Islam Sep 01, 2021

Moonis Ahmad Shah explores a potential scenario where a scout is hired from the Kashmir Valley and sent to Switzerland―a country often equated with Kashmir in its scenic value and tourism sector, albeit without the precarity of military conflict.

Encountering Violence: An Array of Loose Documents in 1528

Sukanya Deb Sep 08, 2021

In October 2016, photographer Rohit Saha journeyed to Imphal, Manipur, embarking on a project that would result in the photobook 1528.

Performing the Nuclear Sublime: Himali Singh Soin’s static range

Najrin Islam Sep 09, 2021

Himali Singh Soin’s performative work, static range, is situated at the intersection of archives, science, the speculative and the anecdotal.

Noise: Resistance in Mithila Jariwala’s Images

Veeranganakumari Solanki Sep 15, 2021

In Mithila Jariwala’s series, Noise (2018–ongoing), the sound evokes the emotions that drive her intimate image-making practice.

Narrating the Tibetan Resistance: The Lhamo Tsering Archive

Mila Samdub Sep 21, 2021

Between 1960 and 1974, a Tibetan guerrilla army operated out of a base in the high-altitude region of Mustang in northern Nepal.

Aspiring to a Nation-State from the Borderlands: Traces of the Personal in the Lhamo Tsering Archive

Mila Samdub Sep 22, 2021

While the previous piece looked at the Lhamo Tsering archive to narrate a lesser-known history of the Tibetan struggle, this post focuses on Lhamo Tsering’s personal history as it is reflected in his archive.

Desert of the Real: Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Kandahar

Ankan Kazi Sep 27, 2021

Safar-e Ghandehar (Kandahar, 2001) was shot in the borderlands of Iran and Afghanistan, using a semi-fictitious trope to represent the reality of the landscape.

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.

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.

The Image-Maker: Remembering Danish Siddiqui’s Eye for Detail

Najrin Islam Oct 06, 2021

As a conflict photographer, Danish Siddiqui was aware of the dangers attendant to his physical presence at the peripheries of volatile events.

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.

A Preoccupation with Time: Revisiting Amar Kanwar’s The Torn First Pages

Mallika Visvanathan Oct 14, 2021

Artist and filmmaker Amar Kanwar’s body of work—spanning four decades—has consistently responded to conflict by presenting and archiving evidence.

Acts of Witnessing: Amar Kanwar’s The Torn First Pages

Mallika Visvanathan Oct 15, 2021

Amar Kanwar’s The Torn First Pages provides interesting parallels to the present moment as Myanmar once again finds itself under military dictatorship.

Manual Scavenging in Tamil Nadu: Palani Kumar’s Documentation of the Practice

Gulmehar Dhillon Oct 21, 2021

Chennai-based photographer M. Palani Kumar’s work with manual scavengers began when he was the cinematographer (2015–17) for Kakkoos, a documentary film by the activist and filmmaker Divya Bharathi.

In Guftgu with Absent Bodies: Nida Mehboob on the Persistent Anguish of Pakistani Ahmadis

Najrin Islam Oct 22, 2021

The Ahmadiyya community in Pakistan exists in scattered geographical pockets as a persecuted minority.

Cultural (Re)Treats: Vivan Sundaram on Artistic Authorship and the Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation

Ketaki Varma Nov 01, 2021

A retreat, says artist Vivan Sundaram as he reflects on the prolific Kasauli Art Centre (1976–91), carries within it multiple meanings.

A Tree at the End of the World: Salomé Jashi’s Taming the Garden

Annalisa Mansukhani Nov 08, 2021

Quietly cryptic in its cinematic absurdity, Taming the Garden is a film by Georgian filmmaker Salomé Jashi that builds the strange story of a billionaire who collects trees from the countryside for his own private garden-island.

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.

World-Changing: Disability, Debility and Cinema in We Make Film

Arushi Vats Nov 10, 2021

We Make Film (2021) throws a radical premise at its audience: what if frameworks of knowing and experiencing disability require approaches that exceed accommodationism?

Performing the Archive: A Talk by Surajit Sarkar

Ankan Kazi Nov 22, 2021

The Asia Art Archive’s Inter-Archives Conversations series, in collaboration with Nepal Picture Library and Mobile Library: Nepal, hosted a session titled Narrativising the Archive on 7 October with Surajit Sarkar.

Fluvial Embodiments: On Abhinava Bhattacharyya’s Jamnapaar

Najrin Islam Nov 23, 2021

“Jamnapaar” translates to “trans-Yamuna,” and refers to the eponymous river in a state of passage—running through Delhi, dividing the city into two relatively favourable halves.

Of Life and Labour: Sohrab Hura's Pati

Gulmehar Dhillon Nov 30, 2021

Sohrab Hura’s eleven-minute-long black-and-white documentary film depicts the realities of a small village in the Central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

Objects of Discourse: Magazines, Books

Ankan Kazi Dec 08, 2021

The afternoon panel of the second day of the conference Concerning Photography was titled “Magazines, Books.” It addressed the impact of printed and digital media on photography cultures.

In Person: An Elegy for Ecology with Sharbendu De

Prabhakar Duwarah Dec 25, 2021

For the tenth episode of In Person, we speak with Sharbendu De about his ongoing show An Elegy for Ecology (2016–ongoing) at the Shrine Empire Gallery, Delhi.

Unsettling the Native: Documentary Films on Political Violence

Ankan Kazi Dec 27, 2021

On November 2021, the Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation had organised a panel discussion to bring into focus a series of documentary films that addressed the complex legacies of partition and communal violence in Eastern India.

Nationhood, Interrupted: On Moonis Ahmad Shah’s Material for a Love Letter to Comrades from the Subcontinent

Najrin Islam Dec 29, 2021

Across a diptych-like frame, Moonis Ahmad Shah places disparate elements in dialogue with one another to foreground the absurdity embedded in the arrangement of landscapes per territorial politics.

Classification of the Public Citizenry: Data Institutions in Seismic Vibrato

Sukanya Deb Jan 04, 2022

Karthik KG’s video work Seismic Vibrato shows a revolving view of a three-dimensional dot-cloud model of the Supreme Court of India enmeshed with an eerie 8-bit soundtrack.

Documenting through Residue: In Conversation with Zishaan Latif

Najrin Islam Jan 22, 2022

Orchestrated with support from the incumbent government and the police, the pogrom in North-East Delhi in February 2020 followed many months of peaceful protest against the divisive Citizenship Amendment Act.

Fictive Historiographies: In Conversation with Parvathi and Nayantara Nayar

Mallika Visvanathan Jan 25, 2022

The artist Parvathi Nayar and researcher and performer Nayantara Nayar discusses the work “Chicken Run,” which excavates a history of the Korean War through its connection to India.

Against Forgetting: Family Albums of Disappeared Persons

Sukanya Deb Jan 27, 2022

Siva Sai Jeevanantham accessed case files and photographs of enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings and state-sponsored torture, along with family photo albums in the highly militarised state of Kashmir.

Visions of the Apocalypse: Ecological Disaster through Social Media and Myth

Sukanya Deb Jan 29, 2022

Paribartana Mohanty’s video work Four Songs of Apocalypse (2021) uses mythology and folk traditions to look at narratives of disaster.

Analogue Retellings: In Conversation with Ashish Sahoo

Najrin Islam Feb 10, 2022

In Ashish Sahoo’s work with film photography, the medium and the content are intricately connected, and each serves the other in the production of alternative vocabularies for traditional narratives.

Radio Colomboscope: Connecting the Aural Histories of the South

Ankan Kazi Feb 14, 2022

Colomboscope 2022 organised an online radio programme titled A Thousand Channels, for which Syma Tariq curated a selection of audio texts, sound works, music, poetry and conversations.

The Changing Face of Slave Island: In Conversation with We Are From Here

Tashyana Handy Feb 19, 2022

In this conversation, Firi Rahman and Lojithan Ramanathan discuss Ashray, an interactive installation featured at Colomboscope 2022.

Imagined Memory: In Conversation with Liz Fernando

Abilaschan Balamuraley Feb 22, 2022

Artist Liz Fernando, a German of Sri Lankan descent, works with archival images and visual memory to explore different stories of migration.

A Voyage in Time: Rajee Samarasinghe’s If I Were Any Further Away I’d Be Closer to Home

Ankan Kazi Feb 25, 2022

Rajee Samarasinghe is a Sri Lankan visual artist and filmmaker who left his island-country in 1998 at the age of ten, when the civil war was underway for about fifteen years already.

Sacred Unveilings: Sepideh Farsi’s 7 Veils

Ankan Kazi Feb 27, 2022

In 7 Veils, Farsi carries a straightforward agenda, if the film needs to be reduced to one: that of peeling the layers of perceptual violence that afflicts a country, distorts its voices and manipulates its image for the world outside.

Fishing for Utopia: Dharmasena Pathiraja’s The Wasps are Here

Ankan Kazi Feb 28, 2022

Bambaru Avith looks at the impact of westernised, urban modernities as they encroach upon the lives of rural, isolated communities like the one shown in Kalpitiya, a small fishing village in north-western Sri Lanka.

Between Motion and Stillness: In Conversation with Priyank Gothwal

Annalisa Mansukhani Mar 03, 2022

The practice of visual artist Priyank Gothwal occupies an intermediary position between the possibilities of still and moving images.

Documenting Dalit Resistance: The Trajectory of Dalit Camera

Ankan Kazi Mar 09, 2022

Over the last decade, Dalit Camera has become a video-making institution and community media practice that foregrounds the problem of caste as it intersects with various other social barriers in India.

Quarter Number 4/11: Looking Back Ten Years On

Sujaan Mukherjee Mar 11, 2022

Filmmaker and activist Ranu Ghosh had met Singh quite by chance two years prior to the demolition of quarter 4/11.

1528 and the Malom Massacre: The Making of a Photobook with Rohit Saha

Veeranganakumari Solanki Mar 17, 2022

Rohit Saha’s first photobook 1528 took shape as a project he pursued as a student at the National Institute of Design and eventually turned into long-term research.

Exploring Time, Identity and Nationhood: On Karan Shrestha’s Waiting For Nepal

Sheelasha Rajbhandari Apr 20, 2022

This on-site conversation between Triennale curator Sheelasha Rajbhandari and inter-disciplinary artist Karan Shrestha focusses on the latter’s photo series Waiting for Nepal.

Analogies of Belonging: An Interview with Jasmine Nilani Joseph

Annalisa Mansukhani Apr 23, 2022

In her intricate practice of observation, Jasmine Nilani Joseph draws landscapes of separation that evolve from her personal histories and memories of living in Sri Lanka.

In Person: Live with Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam

Senjuti Mukherjee Apr 30, 2022

Shadow Circus: A Personal Archive of Tibetan Resistance (1957–1974) is a project by Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam in collaboration with Natasha Ginwala, currently on view at IIC, Delhi.

In Person: Pritish and Anu Bali on Homemakers

Prabhakar Duwarah May 01, 2022

Homemakers is a collaboration between artist Pritish Bali and his mother Anu Bali, a homemaker currently living and working in Amritsar, Punjab.

Looking To Intervene: Formulating the Activist Documentary in A Bid for Bengal

Ankan Kazi Jun 09, 2022

A Bid for Bengal (2021) presents a narrative of the rapid advancement of India’s right-wing, Bharatiya Janata Party-led government towards transforming the cultural and electoral politics of power.

Activist Cinema and Print: In Conversation with Kasturi Basu of the People’s Film Collective

Najrin Islam Jun 16, 2022

In this conversation, Kasturi Basu talks about the curatorial decisions illuminating the many challenges faced by activist cinema, including the drive to work against institutional omissions and showcase work that is critical of the state.

Witnessing Us: On Hum Dekhenge, a Photo Document

Ankan Kazi Jun 21, 2022

Curated by Aasif Mujtaba and Mohammad Meharban, Hum Dekhenge features a collection of photographs taken during the anti-CAA protests that were organised in New Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh neighbourhood in late 2019.

History’s Promise: On Suneil Sanzgiri’s At Home But Not At Home

Ankan Kazi Jun 27, 2022

The film attempts to piece together a narrative of identity-formation for the Goan diaspora that has been put through several traumatic upheavals during the mid-twentieth century anti-colonial movements.

The Emergency and Stardom in India: Crackdowns on Creative Liberty in the 1970s

Silpa Mukherjee Jun 28, 2022

The censorship regulations were a subject of frequent discussion in film magazines between 1975 and 1977—a dark period in independent India’s history—sometimes as gossip or sarcasm, and sometimes as serious statements.

Blurred Belonging: In Conversation with Sandra Brewster

Editorial Jul 05, 2022

In this brief interview, Brewster discusses the ways in which notions of symbolism emanate from a broader consideration of “home” or indeed, resettlement.

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.

Virtual Memories: On Suneil Sanzgiri's Letter From Your Far-off Country

Ankan Kazi Aug 29, 2022

Suneil Sanzgiri’s experimental film essay Letter From Your Far-off Country, assumes the shape of an epistolary meditation and dialogue on the growing threats to Indian democracy over the last few years, and its threatening attempts to eclipse the radical pasts of the country.

Amorar Akhyan: Dilara Begum Jolly’s Tales of the Undead

Ankan Kazi Sep 01, 2022

Dilara Begum Jolly's film Amorar Akhyan lies at the cusp of performance and video art, where both forms are utilised to arrive at a more poetic rendering of a haunted space in national memory.

Turbine Bagh: On Samosa Packets as Blueprints of Dissent

Najrin Islam Oct 26, 2022

The Turbine Bagh project emerged from an urgency to respond to incidents of mass arrests and incarcerations over the last few years in India and Bangladesh, with both countries currently under neo-fascist regimes.

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.

Documenting Theatre: Sridhar Balasubramaniyam’s Chameleon Land

Prabhakar Duwarah Dec 21, 2022

Chameleon Land is a photo project by Sridhar Balasubramaniyam that documents Manalmagudi Theatre Land’s entire process as they prepare for and stage the production of Puzhuthimarap Paravaigal.

Have Wheels, Will Travel: Places My Chair Likes to Go

Arti Das Jan 18, 2023

The installation Places My Chair Likes To Go, by Goa-based writer and poet Salil Chaturvedi, was placed at the scenic promenade of Goa’s capital city, Panjim, as part of the Serendipity Arts Festival.

In Person: Ikamo Tlalli—Earthless by Mónica Alcázar-Duarte

Arundhati Chauhan Mar 17, 2023

In Ikamo-Tlalli, Alcázar-Duarte dons the figure of the Beekeeper, dressed in bright red and disrupting the green and earth-hued camouflage around her.

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.

Imaging South Asia: The Turn of a Kaleidoscope

Mallika Visvanathan Apr 24, 2023

With the backdrop of Hangama Amiri’s “Sahar, Nail Salon #1” setting the scene, the symposium Imaging South Asia at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), Saket, brought together a range of artists, curators and critics to ruminate on the notion of South Asia.

Space, Placemaking and Belonging: Shaping South Asia

Mallika Visvanathan Apr 26, 2023

Exploring degrees of belonging and placemaking through recollection, resistance and solidarity, the symposium provided a platform for some of the experiences that shape our understanding of South Asia.

In Person: Notations on Time with Sabih Ahmed

Sandhini Poddar and Sabih Ahmed Apr 28, 2023

Notations on Time explores ontological systems that reveal how artists from the region and its diaspora think about aesthetics, existence, remembrance and futurity.

In Search of Justice: In Conversation with Minal Naomi Wickrematunge

Pramodha Weerasekera May 01, 2023

In this conversation, Minal speaks about the ways in which she attempted to understand and capture de Zoysa as a mysterious yet familiar character.

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.

Fables of Development: Gaurav Puri’s Dhundgiri Ke Phool

Santasil Mallik May 05, 2023

Having premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) earlier this year, the film maps the disintegrating character of Soni, a village in West Bengal, when the construction of an ultramodern airport is set about in its vicinity.

Photo State: A Public Lecture by Christopher Pinney

Editorial May 08, 2023

In his presentation, Pinney spoke about the project PhotoDemos/Citizens of Photography: The Camera and the Political Imagination, supported by an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council.

The Everyday in Citizens’ Protests: In Conversation with Tashiya de Mel

Pramodha Weerasekera May 12, 2023

Tashiya de Mel is a documentary photographer, communications specialist and conservationist. She uses visual storytelling to create narratives that drive social change and highlight the impact of socio-economic and environmental issues in Sri Lanka.

The Medium is the Messiah: Aziz Hazara’s No Starting Point for Revolution

Ankita Ghosh May 15, 2023

With archival prints, aerial videography and tactical use of sound and installation spread out expansively, Hazara presents a visual and aural experience of the everyday in war-torn Afghanistan.

Protests in Monochrome: In Conversation with Tavish Gunasena

Pramodha Weerasekera May 22, 2023

Tavish Gunasena began recording the Aragalaya (a Sinhala word that loosely translates to “struggle”) movement in March 2022. In this conversation, Gunasena discusses his use of monochrome and the need to share records of the protests publicly.

Testimony in the Pandemic: A Lecture by Anuja Ghosalkar and Kai Tuchmann

Prabhjot Kaur May 26, 2023

Both Ghosalkar and Tuchmann’s work focuses heavily on the documentary and people’s histories, contrasting them with the increasing advent of digital mediums.

Technotropies of the Otherwise: A Reading in Submergence

Najrin Islam Jun 05, 2023

Staged at the Theaterhaus Gessneralle, Zurich, from 30 March to 6 April 2023, Technotropies of the Otherwise by artist duo Stephanie Knobel and Samrat Banerjee is simultaneously a performance, film and installation that draws the viewer into an immersive pocket simulating aquatic textures.

The Exemplary Intellectual: On Akshay Indikar’s Udaharanarth Nemade

Ankan Kazi Jun 19, 2023

Akshay Indikar’s documentary Udaharanarth Nemade (For Example, Nemade, 2016) mixes fiction, reportage and interviews to present a largely adulatory portrait of the Jnanpith Award-winning Marathi writer and critic, Bhalchandra Nemade.

Body, Landscape and War: In Conversation with Aziz Hazara

Ankita Ghosh Jun 23, 2023

Bringing the everyday experience of growing up in the middle of war in Afghanistan, interdisciplinary artist Aziz Hazara channels his coming-of-age in such a space.

Mobilising the Camera: Short Films Curated by Vikalp@Prithvi

Ankan Kazi Jun 27, 2023

The films are primarily offered in the form of dialogic provocations—an invitation to engage in debate and broaden the terms by which regional politics across India get translated into national issues and discourses.

Revisiting Black July: ’83 A Very Short Film

Pramodha Weerasekera Jun 29, 2023

’83: A Very Short Film (2016), a stop-motion animated film by Sumudu Athukorala, Sumedha Kelegama and Irushi Tennekoon, attempts to capture the historical and emotional nuances of Black July.

Mourning as Presence: ಮರಣ Marana [Demise] by Vishal Kumaraswamy

Sukanya Deb Jul 07, 2023

In this edited interview excerpt, the artist discusses his work ಮರಣ Marana [Demise] and the translation of grief following death through mourning as a communal practice. Here, bodily movement and the relay of emotions are conveyed in performative gestures.

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.

Postcolonial Histories of Science: On The Gold of a Yellow Plant

Ankan Kazi Jul 26, 2023

The film uses archival photographs, animation and a haunting soundtrack to present the revolutionary careers of three agronomist-activists—Nikolai Vavilov, Amílcar Cabral and Pandurang Khankhoje—whose work effortlessly upended the political norms of their time.

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.

Subtle Archives and Subversions: Akshay Mahajan on Kaghazi Pairahan

Annalisa Mansukhani Aug 02, 2023

Foregrounding the significance of artistic protest in Pakistan, India, Kashmir, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, Kaghazi Pairahan thinks of how making can be construed, shaped and claimed in a time of crisis through testimony, the production of critique around concepts of social transformation and citizenship, as well as contemporary reflections on the subtleties of resistance.

Circuits of Making: Akshay Mahajan on Kaghazi Pairahan

Annalisa Mansukhani Aug 04, 2023

In the second part of an excerpted conversation, co-curator Akshay Mahajan reflects on audience responses and activations, explaining the forms, modalities and trajectories brought together by the scope of Kaghazi Pairahan.

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.

Artist as Citizen: A Public Lecture by Rashmi Devi Sawhney

Editorial Aug 22, 2023

In this edited excerpt of the talk, moderated by Arundhati Chauhan, Sawhney explored the categories of “artist” and “citizen” as concepts grounded in language and history.

The Possibilities of Participation: Rashmi Devi Sawhney on the Artist-Citizen

Editorial Aug 24, 2023

In this continuing video, Dr Rashmi Devi Sawhney further expands on her examination of artistic participation and production as a part of her public lecture Artist as Citizen.

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.

Reparative Listening: Sudarshan Shetty’s Ek Jeevan, Anek

Santasil Mallik Sep 06, 2023

Ek Jeevan, Anek dwells on the oral traditions of listening and retelling through the cross-pollination of the stories of two distant lands.

Spatio-Sensorial Belonging: Omer Wasim’s Rites Adrift

Sukanya Deb Sep 08, 2023

Curated by Anushka Rajendran and presented in collaboration with the Shrine Empire gallery, Omer Wasim's Rites Adrift speaks of displacement and ritual.

Taking it to the Streets: A Public Talk by Ashish Rajadhyaksha

Editorial Sep 27, 2023

In this edited recording of the talk, Rajadhyaksha discusses the concept of expanded cinema. He unpacks how it is understood in legal and juridical terms in India, as well as the legislative and censorial language that often tries to contend with cinema’s remnants beyond the screen.

Cinema Beyond the Screen: Ashish Rajadhyaksha on John–Ghatak–Tarkovsky

Editorial Sep 29, 2023

In this continuing video, Ashish Rajadhyaksha further situates the idea of “expanded cinema” in the context of Indian cinematic histories of production and dissemination.

Madness and Mandates: Pramod Pati's Film Experiments

Ritika Kaushik Oct 09, 2023

Born in 1932, Pati was a graduate of science and a cinematography diploma holder who became renowned for his experimental animation in films.

Following the Rhino: On Sahil Naik’s Karkadann of Land and the Dark Seas

Ankan Kazi Oct 13, 2023

Karkadann of Land and the Dark Seas seeks to investigate architecture as “witness” as well as “evidence”—including the symbolic structures adopted by myths as they seek to enter the domain of history.

Reconsiderations of the Popular: In Conversation with Iftikhar Dadi

Rahaab Allana Oct 16, 2023

The intergenerational show Pop South Asia: Artistic Explorations in the Popular, co-presented by the Sharjah Art Foundation and the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) in Delhi, sought new as well as iconic discoveries of modern and contemporary art across South Asia.

Erasing the Past: Photography in the Archive and the Work of Imran Channa

Ankan Kazi Oct 17, 2023

Channa’s work interrogates the nature of photography and its claim as a medium, especially a transparent one, which can communicate perfect historical knowledge to the present.

Defining the Popular in Art: In Conversation with Iftikhar Dadi

Rahaab Allana Oct 20, 2023

In this continuing interview, Prof. Iftikhar Dadi talks further about the curatorial unpacking of the popular, challenging established notions around “pop art” and situating the discourse within the artworks that were on display as a part of the show.

Cycle of Violence: Dominic Sangma’s Rimdogittanga

Santasil Mallik Nov 04, 2023

Through the film, Sangma illustrates his inordinate storytelling aptitude as he traces a tale of entrenched social differences condensing into cultural dispositions under atmospheres of fear.

Searching for Colour: On Shahrukhkhan Chavada’s Kayo Kayo Colour?

Ankan Kazi Nov 05, 2023

Shahrukhkhan Chavada’s debut feature, Kayo Kayo Colour? (Which Colour? 2023), observes the lives of a Muslim family in Kalupur, an old ghetto in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

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.

Constructing Memories: The Mother of All Lies by Asmae El Moudir

Mallika Visvanathan Nov 11, 2023

El Moudir’s film playfully and creatively challenges notions of representation and erasure through the making and unmaking of the world of the family as it comes to terms with its history.

In Person: Shahrukhkhan Chavada and Wafa Refai on Kayo Kayo Colour?

Arundhati Chauhan Nov 27, 2023

In this edited conversation, Chavada and Refai recount their initial research and the process of conceiving the film, the role of a “playful” realist visual language in their work, and the process of crafting a community from the film.

How Secular is Art?: A Discussion on Art History from the South

Editorial Dec 09, 2023

In this discussion moderated by Arundhati Chauhan, the editors of the volume, Tapati Guha-Thakurta and Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar, present their initial conceptions around the volume, the diverse points of inquiry and the larger implications of theorising the secular within art histories from South Asia.

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.

Subject, Form and Process: In Conversation with Prasiit Sthapit

Santasil Mallik Jan 09, 2024

In this conversation, Nepali artist Prasiit Sthapit shares how he developed his documentary photography practice by following his curiosity and the processes that contributed to his varied visual language.

Medium and Narrative: On Kalkimanthankatha

Adreeta Chakraborty Jan 19, 2024

Filmed on 16mm for daylight shots and digital for nighttime, Ashish Avikunthak’s Kalkimanthankatha (2015) undertakes an experiment with hybridity that works well to magnify and formally replicate the metaphysical conflict of Kalki’s (and Godot’s) materiality—of being and not being.

Reinventing the Wheel: On Meghnath’s In Search of Ajantrik

Ankan Kazi Jan 24, 2024

Meghnath’s documentary In Search of Ajantrik (2023) revisits the locations where Ritwik Ghatak shot his famous 1958 feature film Ajantrik (The Unmechanical/The Pathetic Fallacy).

The River as Archive: On Habibur Rahman’s Ichamati

Ankan Kazi Jan 29, 2024

Habibur Rahman’s The River of Partition (2023) documents Ichamati’s riverine environment, the diverse communities that live around it, and the socio-historical role played by the river in the wake of the partition of India in 1947 and the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.

Collaborative Seedings: Grounded Artistic Practices, Pedagogies and Questions

Pamudu Tennakoon Feb 01, 2024

The latest edition of Colomboscope, titled Way of the Forest, explores ecologies, histories, environments, pasts, presents, and most poignantly, collective and individual relationships with the environments that surround us.

Building Solidarities: Transformation through Art

Saloni Jaiwal Feb 10, 2024

During a panel titled Art: An Agent of Change, organised during the India Art Fair 2024, what reverberates and becomes a refrain is “What can art do and what can art be?” The panellists included Pooja Sood, the Director of Khoj; Mónica Bello, Head of Arts at CERN, Geneva; and Dr Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Director and Chief Curator at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.

Ritual Purity, Reigning Pollution: On Hari Katragadda’s Lost River

Ankita Ghosh Feb 12, 2024

By directly working with water collected from the river and all that comes with it, Hari Katragadda leaves it open to viewers to piece together meanings—to connect the dots in thinking through purity, pollution, rituality, religion, ecological destruction and decay.

Engaging with Detritus: On Anoli Perera’s Debris Collector

Mallika Visvanathan Feb 15, 2024

Anoli Perera’s solo show Debris Collector presents an elegiac reflection on Sri Lanka’s complex socio-political and cultural history. Extending the artist’s preoccupation with forms of memory and forgetting, the show reflects on the violence of the civil war in Sri Lanka and the Easter Sunday blasts to lay bare the tenuous nature of political stability.

Upon Arrival: Image and Narrative in Sunil Gupta’s Come Out

Annalisa Mansukhani Feb 17, 2024

Exhibited at the contemporary art space of Vadehra Art Gallery in Defence Colony, New Delhi, Sunil Gupta’s Come Out brings together a series of black-and-white photographs taken in London between 1985 and 1995. They present a keen lens into the political presence of queerness, framed against the background of Margaret Thatcher’s England.

Viral Rap: Protest Songs on YouTube

Sagorika Singha Feb 29, 2024

Between December 2019 and January 2020, several protest songs against the CAA emerged from Assam and were released on various YouTube channels. The discussion generated around the YouTube protest songs reflects the ingrained anxiety about “illegal migrants”, which is then concretised as this genre of songs propagates the criteria of “ethnic Assamese” identity.

Oceanic Revolutions: Two Refusals… by Suneil Sanzgiri

Arundhati Chauhan Mar 07, 2024

Two Refusals is the third film in an ongoing exploration by Suniel Sanzgiri into the past and postcolonial refusals in Goan history. The film interweaves 16mm footage shot in Goa, Mumbai, Lisbon and Sagres in Portugal with altered archival footage, snippets from anticolonial films, CGI animation, and a poetic narrative written by Sham-e-Ali Nayeem.

Weather(ing) Crisis: On 28° North and Parallel Weathers

Mallika Visvanathan Mar 15, 2024

The exhibition 28° North and Parallel Weathers presents an intervention that constitutes a long term seasonal preoccupation with water and its myriad conceptual possibilities.

The Infinite Companion: Bombay Tilts Down by CAMP

Ankan Kazi Mar 18, 2024

Shot during the Covid-19 pandemic, Bombay Tilts Down (2022), a seven-channel film by the collaborative studio CAMP presents vertical landscape views, encompassing the sky and sea to land and its varied details. The work is a profound exploration of Mumbai's urban landscape through the lens of working-class perspectives.

Ecology, Crime and the State: The Sovereign Forest

Shranup Tandukar Mar 20, 2024

Encompassing documentary film and multimedia works, the exhibition chronicles the resistance movements of Odisha’s indigenous and local communities against government entities and corporations.

Rituals for the Dead on the Seashore: Cassie Machado’s Afterlife

Pramodha Weerasekera Apr 04, 2024

Cassie Machado's series Afterlife (2011-16) is a haunting reminder of the deaths and disappearances that occurred throughout the Sri Lankan Civil war, purely through remnant belongings as survivor objects.

Daule Daule: Through the Tharu Lens

Alfa M. Shakya Apr 16, 2024

The Daule Daule exhibition gives the viewer a glimpse into the lives of the Tharu community of Nepal. It shows us moments from their everyday lives and also dives into their rich repository of indigenous knowledge.

Metonym, Anthropocene: Our Conspiring Hosts

Shivani Kasumra Apr 20, 2024

Telescoping across jamnapaar Delhi, Amazonian floods, villages dotting the coast of Odisha, oil fields of Assam, alluvial mounds in Kashmir, coastal Colombo and a National Park in Nepal, the exhibition Our Conspiring Hosts assembles a geography of disaster, dispossession, and damage, ravaged by the oft-cited watchword of our age: Anthropocene.

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.

Placing Photography: Reflecting on Recent Curatorial Practices

Anoushkha Prasad May 02, 2024

With conversations in the programme seeking to reflect on contemporary artistic and curation practices, the panel discussion titled Framing Photographic Practice focused on photographic images as a site of producing and preserving histories and cultures while also interrogating the impact of photography on our experiences as we navigate through the ceaseless streaming online landscape.

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.

Of Landless Belonging: Amid the Villus by Sumathy Sivamohan

Banhi Sarkar May 09, 2024

The renowned Sri Lankan artist, poet, performer, filmmaker and academic Sumathy Sivamohan’s latest work, Amid the Villus (2022), is her first documentary project, offering a poignant exploration of lives intersected by land, conflict, displacement and memory.

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.

Creating the Imageograph: Nina Sugati SR and the Counter-Cultural Image

Ankan Kazi May 21, 2024

Nina Sugati SR's participation in dialogues at the Vision Exchange Workshop, organised by Akbar Padamsee in Bombay between 1969 and 1972, led to her conception of the “Imageograph,” which was a compound of the moving image invested with photography’s access to the human spirit.

Films Beyond Borders: Priya Naresh’s Small-Time Cinema

Anoushkha Prasad Jun 04, 2024

Priya Naresh's documentary Small-Time Cinema (2022) follows two YouTube filmmaking groups–Assamese Chemistry from Sipajhar in Assam, India, and One Team Media from Hazara Town in Quetta, Pakistan and chronicles their journey of creating films about their own communities and issues, while also preserving their language and complex social and cultural histories.

Discerning the Marginal: Trolley Times and Documenting Protest

Kamayani Sharma Jun 06, 2024

Trolley Times (2023) is less an archive or chronicle than a measure of a historic velocity, marked at different points by campsite longueurs and spirited agitation. Echoing its beginning, the film’s closing sequence foregrounds the parallels between agricultural and journalistic processes, and the harvest of grains and facts, gauging the times of the trolley.

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.

What Art Memes to Me: Memes and Art/Memes as Art?

Sagorika Singha Jun 26, 2024

Memes offer a mirror image of our volatile present as much as their avant-garde heritage, which can be connected to their innate subversive potential and their cultivation by the online subcultural community. These digital objects can stand in for alternative groups both in a negative as well as positive way—as new tools of solidarity for minorities and other marginalised people as well as hateful tools for the rest.

While We Watched: “Godi Media” and Ravish Kumar’s Dissent

Radhika Saraf Jun 28, 2024

Recipient of the Peabody Award 2024, Vinay Shukla’s documentary film, While We Watched (2023), is a sensitive portrayal of former NDTV journalist Ravish Kumar, amidst the rise of what Kumar labels pejoratively as “Godi Media.”

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.

Captive Portraits: White Van Stories by Leena Manimekalai

Annalisa Mansukhani Jul 04, 2024

White Van Stories by Leela Manimekalai is unafraid to put history in conversation with the pursuit of truth, and in doing so, it asserts a demand for culpability, engaged spectatorship and respect for the aggrieved and the disappeared.

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).

A City of Sadness: Hou Hsiao-hsien On Post-War Taiwan

Akash Sarraf Jul 15, 2024

A leading figure in the Taiwanese film scene, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s films offer a nuanced representation of Taiwan’s complex, sweeping history.

Goodbye South, Goodbye: Taiwanese Youth’s Fractured Identity and Cultural Detachment

Akash Sarraf Jul 16, 2024

This essay examines contemporary Taiwanese youth's disconnectedness from its culture and politics and reflects upon how Hou Hsiao-hsien’s compositional aesthetics render this estrangement through distinct techniques and vocabularies.

Moonsongs for Earth: Musical Imaginaries of Revolution

Arundhati Chauhan Jul 20, 2024

Prasiit Sthapit’s ongoing documentary series Moonsongs for Earth (2022–) chronicles the histories and legacies of music in the midst of the ten-year-long war in Nepal between the erstwhile constitutional monarchic government and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).

Lobbying, Pimping, Sycophancy: The Denial of Repression in Bangladesh

Shahidul Alam Aug 05, 2024

The standard practice that the government has adopted towards anyone who questions government policy by labelling them a ‘terrorist’ and ‘anti-liberation’ is deeply insulting to people who are committed to the principles of egalitarianism, social justice, and democracy—the underlying principles of the war of liberation of Bangladesh.

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.

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.

Humanity After Nuremberg: The Colour Line

Radhika Saraf Aug 24, 2024

Radhika Saraf writes on how W.E.B. Du Bois’ concept of “the colour line” can explain why atrocities that were being committed by the West onto the colonial peoples went without consequence, but provoked a stringent response when committed in Europe during WWII.

The Tokyo Trial: “Victor’s Justice”?

Radhika Saraf Aug 25, 2024

Radhika Saraf writes on the distinction between “crime against man” and “crime against the white man” as revealed in the Tokyo Trial.

The International Criminal Court: Is the “Child of Nuremberg” Universal?

Radhika Saraf Aug 26, 2024

Radhika Saraf writes on how South Africa, in fidelity to the integrity of the Nuremberg principles, presented a remarkable genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice in January 2024 to preserve the foundation of Palestinian life.

Canned Laughter: On Abdallah Al-Khatib’s Little Palestine

Ankan Kazi Sep 03, 2024

In several protest scenes featured in Abdallah al-Khatib’s documentary on life at Yarmouk, Little Palestine: Diary of a Siege (2021), people invoke a unity between Syrians and Palestinians—as large parts of both communities have been subjected to recurring traumas born from authoritarian control and global failures to secure their lives and livelihoods.

Against Abstraction: In Conversation with Maen Hammad and Dina Salem

Kamayani Sharma Sep 05, 2024

In this edited conversation with Kamayani Sharma, Palestinian photographers Maen Hammad and Dina Salem speak about Against Abstraction, an activation they initiated with Sari Tarazi and Ahmad Alaqra at Arles from 1 July to 7 July 2024, supported by DoubleDummy Studio.

Jejuri: A Reflection in Nine Frames

Ninad Pandit Sep 13, 2024

In an ode to the Khandoba temple at Jejuri, shot on Kodak Vision3 250D film, Ninad Pandit explores the tension between the flaneur, the outsider looking in and the history and significance of the site.

Archives of Agrarian Unrest: The Sivalokathyagar Temple

Shibi Nandan Sep 14, 2024

Achalpuram stands out as a rare case in the history of Chola temple architecture where moments of resistance by tenant cultivators—who had little to no control over the Brahmin temples—have found a place on the temple walls.

Imagistic Traces from the Pandemic: still, life by Ishan Tankha

Santasil Mallik Sep 19, 2024

Ishan Tankha recently exhibited a triadic set of zines titled still, life at this year’s edition of Pulp Society’s Paper & Play. The zine collection follows an ambulatory trail, primarily across Delhi and its outskirts, taking the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 as its focal point.

Cartographies of Control: Mapping Coastal Regulation Zones

Kavyasri Saravanan Sep 21, 2024

Historically, cartographic exercises have been used as potent instruments of state power, shaping territorial claims, resource allocation and social order as mechanisms of control. In India, an exemplary case is the delineation of Coastal Regulation Zones (CRZ) based on ecological sensitivity and development potential.

Of Music and Solidarity: Sons and Fathers by Sumathy Sivamohan

Pramodha Weerasekera Sep 26, 2024

Sons and Fathers (2017) is part of filmmaker Sumathy Sivamohan’s inspirational repertoire of independent films made over many years amidst government censorship and excessive control of the film industry in Sri Lanka. It is Sivamohan’s powerful and detailed fictional telling about 1983’s Black July riots and the ensuing civil war in Sri Lanka.

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.

Breaking the Cycle: On the Spirit of Youth Movements

Aishwarya Baidar Oct 03, 2024

Premiered at Hot Docs 2024 and screened at Sheffield Film Festival 2024, the 117-minute documentary focuses on the social and political turmoil in Thailand under the military junta that seized power through a coup d'état in 2014.

Gaza's Endless Silences: On the Politics of Visibility

Asim Rafiqui Oct 05, 2024

In the first of this two-part essay, written in 2009, Asim Rafiqui reflects on his time in Gaza amidst Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09. As a document of his own attempts to grapple with routine scenes of displacement, deaths and burials, the essay sheds light on the historical repetition of violence against Palestinians.

Gaza: Love, Curse

Asim Rafiqui Oct 07, 2024

In the second part of his essay written amidst Israeli bombing of Gaza during Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09, Asim Rafiqui writes about his encounter with Ismail Ibrahim Abu Eida, an encounter which made him pick up his camera again and tell the stories of Gazans.

Against Erasure: To Remember is to Reconstruct

Santasil Mallik Oct 09, 2024

In the English-Arabic bilingual photo book Against Erasure (2024), co-editors Sandra Barrilaro and Teresa Aranguren take Johnny Mansour’s collection as a starting point to compile previously unpublished photographs of Palestine encompassing the period from 1898 to 1948.

Muqaddimah: The War is Not Over Yet

Radhika Oct 11, 2024

In Muqaddimah (2024), Aziz Hazara underscores repetitively, through a series of contradictions, the absurdities of war—the manner in which war detritus appears as recycled technologies of violence, the fragilities of mechanisms of control and waste as imperative to global circuits of capital.

Archive of Absurdities: Abstraction, Waste and Sonic Memory

Radhika Oct 12, 2024

Aziz Hazara’s second solo show at Experimenter, Muqaddimah, presents a series of contradictions as a way of insistence on viewing the war economy’s technologies of control along with its waste. The artist makes a satirical comment on contestations of power while simultaneously telling stories of the landscape of human suffering.

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.

Gaza Lives: Notes from Film Works for Palestine

Santasil Mallik Oct 21, 2024

On 5 September 2024, Film Works for Palestine opened with the fourth edition of the “Gaza Lives” event periodically presented by the Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF), where a line-up of speakers and performers paid tribute to the art and artists of Gaza.

On Omar: Life and Love in Occupied Palestine

Sudha Padmaja Francis Oct 24, 2024

A tense political thriller set in Palestine, the film Omar (2013) by Hany Abu Assad follows a young Palestinian man who is caught between love, loyalty and betrayal.

Colouring the Shadows: On Coloniality and Childhood

Kamayani Sharma Oct 29, 2024

Three short documentaries that explore the long colonisation of Palestinian childhoods in the last half-century are Jacques Madvo’s Blown by the Wind (1971), Khadijeh Habashneh’s Children without Childhood (1980) and Michel Khleifi’s Ma’loul Celebrates its Destruction (1984).

Film Works for Palestine: Solidarity Within and Beyond the Industry

Santasil Mallik Oct 30, 2024

Last month, Film Workers for Palestine (FWP), Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF), Palestine Film Institute (PFI) and Film Students 4 Palestine (FS4P) co-presented the three-day parallel programme Film Works for Palestine at the Innis Town Hall, University of Toronto.

Creating Community: In Conversation with Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam

Mallika Visvanathan Nov 15, 2024

The Dharamshala International Film Festival (DIFF), founded by filmmakers Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam in 2012, is one of India’s foremost independent film festivals. We spoke to the founders about why they started the festival, the importance of community, the infrastructural role festivals like this can play and the future of independent film festivals in the country.

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.
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