SAROJINI LEWIS: July 2018

Wah pahuchne ki dasha - That state of arrival

An Exhibition in response to Kahe Gaile Bidesia Gallery,

GB Pant Institute of Social Sciences, Allahabad

A reflecion on the question, Kahe Gaile Bides? forms the essence of this exhibition that mirrors the Bidesia gallery of the GBPSSI by responding and abstracting certain objects and archival photographs in its collection. The unstable ocean surface leads to a migration story constituted between a place of deport and a place of arrival. In between the fast movement of oceans a timeles exchange of cultures connects various geographical locations. The ocean takes its own course or time to do so. Waves and circular movements of the sea become a mirror through which our visions transforms, distorts and reshapes. On the Indian shore a bottle was found that once belonged to a migrant who travelled to Surinam. Someone said that it was trown in the sea, the sea brought back the bottle through the movements and its currents. It contained a cutlass to cut sugarcane, an old sari of a lonely woman, Khadau (footwear), a letter of a missing girl, photographs of an old family house in Bihar, a flying saw, a black cloth with a hole made by a surgical blade, a parrot that repeated the words from the letter of the missing migrant. The bottle resambled a surrealist shape, a transition of gathri once taken by a migrant during a three month boat journey.

This response is dedicated to a specific history of migration: the stories and journeys of the diaspora Bhojpuri community, and its focus on indentured labour migration to Surinam (1873 - 1917). The Bidesiya gallery part of Manav Vikas Sangrahalaya Museum is an exciting instance in museology history of India because of its focus on the labour migration in the colonial period while also giving the perspective from the women and families who were left behind in the villages, and the complex history of several generations of Bhojpuri diaspora connecting from Bihar to Surinam to Netherlands and vice versa. The gallery was developed through a collaborative research between three institutions: GB Pant Social Science Institute in Allahabad, India, the KIT Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and the Research Institute of the Anton de Kom University of Surinam (IMWO) in Paramaribo, Surinam.

Visualising a collective response that accesses, constitutes and interprets psychonanalytical readings of archives that reshapes the nature of knowledge. New relationships and meetings between people of multiple backgrounds was commonplace on the boat journeys that took place more than 100 years ago. This exhibition of contemporary art will be hosted in the foyer gallery of Manav Vikas Sangrahalaya and mirrors relationships and response of 8 artists from different backgrounds working collectively to produce new currents and potentions of reading the permanent collection of the Bidesiya Gallery and the history of indentured labour migration.

Artists that conceptualised the exhibition; Preeti Singh, Akansha Rastogi, Paribartana Mohanty, Sudheer Rajbar, Birender Yadav, Naresh Kumar, Ranjeeta Kumari.

Curated by Sarojini Lewis.

In Collaboration with Clark House.

Opening Speech by Sunil Gupta director of Allahabad Museum

Project initiated by Badri Narayan director of the GBPSSI