Embody: The Gender Issue, a body of photographs from PIX: A Photography Quarterly, which is supported by the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan. The Exhibition premieres in Bangalore and will then travel to other cities. In all 13 artists are represented, including two from Bangalore: Indu Antony and Ryan Lobo.
In the same context, will be screened "...ebang bewarish (...and the unclaimed)" by Debalina on Saturday 06.09.2014, 6.30 p.m. at the Bhavan, preceded by a Guided Tour through the Exhibition by Rahaab Allana, Editor of PIX and followed by a dialogue between Poushali Basak and Nupur Basu.
This issue of PIX, featured by approximately 10 contemporary photographers with 7-8 images each, covers the theme of gender through various photographic practices, ranging from reportage to conceptual art. In dealing with an assessment of identity, evoking every day and fantastical characters, this edition emerges at a time when there is a national and global consciousness about the intricacies of image-making practices, and their constitution of our socio-cultural environment. 'Self' becomes the only reality that remains with the viewer. Gender becomes a play, a part performance, no matter how deeply felt.
Photography in the present is a means of the everyday and therefore negotiates various ways in which democracy is unhinged or advanced depending on the circumstances. In a media frenzied environment of the present, we may think of forms in which images are organised or captured as tools of propaganda - seeking to propagate a worldview - but also deployed by artists in the process of exploring an imaginary world or creative impetus. Given these positions, we have noticed with submissions to PIX over time that there is an overt tendency in India/S. Asia towards social documentary photography - concentrating on the aestheticisation of the image. Do we then assume that contemporary practices here forge a division between images that are 'authentic' and those, which are 'aesthetic'? Can we further suggest a more complex relationship or reading of the rising role of politics in art in order to further investigate some of the working practices of photography as a medium? These questions are meant as markers for understanding the changing relationship between photographers (authors) and their images, as well as a viewer's ability or prerogative to question objectivity in photography.
In order to renew the understanding of gender, this theme is illustrated through 'people's photography' but also through the abstract character of places, spaces, objects and situations that has been described in gendered forms. Thus the focus of the exhibition is also on the formation of gender identities as well as on the struggles that constitute that position.
About the movie.
On February 21, 2011, two young girls committed suicide together in Nandigram, one of the interior villages in West Bengal. As the story unfolded we came to know of their love affair, and non-acceptance of the village community as well as their families. To deal with ‘abnormal’ relationship, one of the girls was married off in haste. Under societal pressure, the two girls committed suicide. But their death did not end societal non-acceptance. After their death their bodies lay in the police morgue for several days unclaimed by their families. One of the girls left a letter telling their story of love and loathing and asking their parents to cremate them together. The parents rejected their wish and the unclaimed bodies were disposed of by the police, unattended, uncared for.
Debalina’s film … ebang bewarish' (…and the unclaimed), talks about these two unclaimed dead bodies and many more dead and living ones. The central question being non-acceptance of non-normative persons, the film brings out the pain and desolation of such persons who are ‘unclaimed’ by their loved ones and by society at large. Four protagonists narrate their stories of living as misfits. The film explores the connection of these tales of living persons with the dead ones.
The film is a tribute to life, non-normative or not, and also to death, when that is the only way to live!
This documentary, while centering on the suicide of Swapna and Sucheta, also tells the stories of four different individuals who, because of their otherness, their gender or sexual preferences, have to go through their unique struggles, yet similar to that of Swapna's and Sucheta's life. The film explores the stand of LGBT activists, representatives of law, and social scientists on the specific case of the two girls from Sonachura as well as the question of social segregation, taboo, family oppositions and the views of the society at large.
Poushali Basak is Programme Officer at Sappho for Equality in Kolkata.
Nupur Basu has been a journalist for over three decades in print and television. Former Senior Editor with NDTV, she is now an independent journalist, documentary filmmaker and media educator.
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