In the gigantic exhibition hall of Museo Camera, in Gurugram, hang scrolls that bear powerful pictures and heart-piercing tales. They transcend time and geographical borders to unveil the memories of lives long before history drew divisive lines between India and Pakistan.
Painter-photographer Manisha Gera Baswani’s installation Postcards from Home is like a symphony of emotions where artists recount their stories before the Radcliffe Line was drawn. Their recollection is accompanied by a photograph shot by Baswani in their studios.
Saba Iqbal Text | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
Delhi-based artist Manisha has been documenting Indian artists since 2001. In 2015, she went to participate in the Lahore Biennale and began visiting Pakistani artists in their studios. “Both my parents come from that side of the border and I grew up on stories of love, loss, and belonging. My parents have always talked about a home left behind and speak Lahorian Punjabi. So, I always had a connection. ,” says Manisha.
For the exhibition, Manisha documented 22 Pakistani artists including Amin Gulgee, Muhammad Imran Qureshi, Adeela Suleman, Riffat Alvi and 25 Indians such as Gopi Gajwani, Krishen Khanna, Paramjit Singh, Nilima Sheikh, Bharti Kher and many others.
She says she found the artists with links to the Partition by sending WhatsApp messages to artists with Sindhi and Punjabi surnames and enquiring about their family history.
Riffat Alvi | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
“Hearing their stories, I realised there was more love and longing than bitterness as portrayed otherwise. Having grown up on stories of affection, and camaraderie, I felt an artistic urge to change the narrative; that’s how the project took shape,” she says.
Baswani always travels with her Canon camera because she says, she is a serious photographer. However, lot of unplanned shootings also took place in the studios of the artists.
Riffat Alvi text | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
Oscillating between painting and photography, Baswani always felt the two were distinct passions, but this project helped connect the two.
The project takes different forms in different places. At the 2019 India Art Fair, the 47 postcards that had the image of the artist on one side and their story on the other were tucked in wheat sacks; in the Kochi Biennale, they took on the form of scrolls, as seen in the ongoing show. The postcards were also exhibited at the Ashmolean Museum in the UK early this year. At Museo Camera these visual and textual frames have been showcased as 25 scrolls.
As patrons meander through the exhibition, they are not merely spectators, but time-travellers, journeying back to the age of innocence, where friendships knew no borders and hearts recognised no divisions. Postcards from Home beckons the observer to embrace the shared heritage of the two nations and rekindle the embers of kinship that time had not extinguished.
( At Museo Camera, Gurugram; Till August 6(closed on Mondays); 11am to 7 pm
