In December 2022, The Confluence Collective participated in the Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa, India, as part of the Future Landing program. The exhibition showcased four digitized family albums alongside the personal work of TCC member Mridu Rai. The exhibition, titled How Do I Bring You Home?, engaged visitors in a conversation about colonial visual archives through diverse perspectives, offering an opportunity to reflect on history, memory, and identity.
Mridu Rai: How Do I Bring You Home?
Mridu Rai’s project, How Do I Bring You Home?, is a deeply personal engagement with the L.A. Waddell Collection at the Royal Anthropological Institute in London. Rai’s work interrogates colonial visual archives and challenges the traditional narratives associated with these collections. Through her project, Rai seeks to explore the multifaceted ways in which colonial visual materials can be viewed, listened to, and interpreted—bringing a fresh, critical perspective to historical images that have often been shaped by colonial power dynamics.
By confronting these archives through a more intimate, localized lens, Rai offers a platform for questioning the authority of these images and the way they shape our understanding of culture, identity, and history. How Do I Bring You Home?serves as an artistic exploration of memory, inviting viewers to reconsider what is often taken for granted in historical representations.
In addition to Rai's project, the exhibition included a curated selection of four digitized family albums and archival materials, each offering a unique perspective on life in the Darjeeling Hills and the broader region. These family albums serve as both personal and collective documents, providing insights into the lives, histories, and transformations of the people of this culturally rich and diverse area.
The Sufian Family AlbumThis album provides a window into the Tibetan Muslim community in the Darjeeling Hills. Through its intimate portrayal of family life and community practices, the album offers a rich insight into the socio-cultural landscape of a minority group. The Sufian Family Album also reflects how diverse communities have coexisted in the region, showcasing a seamless sense of belonging and shared experience.
Dr Graham’s Homes ArchiveThis archive holds historical significance for its depiction of Kalimpong—a town shaped by colonial rule and racial structures. Dr Graham’s Homes Archive documents the construction and transformation of Kalimpong during the colonial period, providing valuable insights into the racial and colonial underpinnings that shaped the region. The photographs invite viewers to reflect on the legacy of empire and its impact on local communities.
The Brihat Rai Family AlbumThe Brihat Rai Family Album offers deeply personal narratives that explore individual and familial identities. Through portraits and images of everyday life, the album highlights the relationship between individuals and their families, as well as their connection to the broader social and cultural context. The album’s aesthetic choices, such as the prominence of male patriarchs and religious iconography, open an analytical space for examining gender dynamics and social structures in subtle, everyday contexts.
The Tseten Tashi ArchiveA key feature of the exhibition was the Tseten Tashi Archive, an extensive collection belonging to Tseten Tashi, the official photographer of the Chogyal of Sikkim and the King of Bhutan during the mid-1900s. Tseten Tashi was responsible for documenting many significant events and moments in the history of Sikkim and Bhutan, capturing the royal families and landscapes in stunning detail. His archive offers a unique visual study of the region, as well as an exploration of the role of the photographer as a documentarian. The collection also highlights the challenges and opportunities of archiving a place's history through the lens of personal and royal perspectives.
The exhibition at the Serendipity Arts Festival was part of a larger Future Landing program, which explored the intersection of art, culture, and history. Visitors to the exhibition were able to engage with the digitized family albums and Mridu Rai’s project in a multifaceted way. The combination of personal archives, historical documents, and contemporary artistic interpretation provided a nuanced understanding of the region’s complex history.
The exhibition not only showcased the work of Mridu Rai and the digitized family albums but also encouraged a broader conversation about the power of visual archives and the act of reinterpreting historical images. Through these diverse collections, the exhibition explored the potential of personal narratives to reshape our understanding of colonial history, cultural identity, and social belonging.
The exhibition was curated by Serendipity Arts Festival, with the aim of sparking new conversations about the ways in which personal and collective histories are documented, archived, and presented. By bringing together diverse perspectives from family albums, colonial archives, and contemporary visual art, the exhibition created a platform for critical reflection and dialogue on how histories are constructed and remembered.
TCC exhibition at the Serendipity Arts Festival was a significant moment in The Confluence Collective’s ongoing efforts to engage with the colonial visual archives and the histories of the Darjeeling Hills. It provided a space for rethinking and challenging the ways we encounter and interact with historical imagery, offering visitors new tools to understand and interpret the complexities of memory, identity, and culture.
Through this exhibition, TCC continues its mission to support and amplify local and marginalized voices, providing a platform for new forms of storytelling and reflection that challenge colonial narratives and offer fresh perspectives on the histories of the region.
We extend our heartfelt thanks to the Serendipity Arts Festival and all the contributors to the exhibition for making this project a meaningful and impactful experience.
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