Pictures of a people

The Unremembered is a video and sound installation that throws light on the Indian soldiers from the Italian campaign of World War II. Pics courtesy/BDL Museum

While the Dr Bhau Daji Lad museum has been under repairs for two years, the special projects space has been hosting exhibits for free. It's here that Annu Palakunnathu Matthew's exhibition titled The Answers Take Time is on display with eight distinct bodies of work.

Matthew is a professor of Art at the University of Rhode Island and has received international acclaim with notable exhibitions under her belt. She has had solo shows at the Royal Ontario Museum, The Newport Art Museum, and Nuit Blanche Toronto. Some of her group exhibits include the ones at The RISD Museum, The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, The Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, among others.

A 21-page polaroid emulsion transfer on paper, Fabricated Memories highlights Matthew's memories of her father and childhood in England

The Answers Take Time is Matthew's first monograph showcasing her nearly three-decade-long career. She uses various photographic technologies such as photography, collage, animation, and parody to explore personal experiences and identity to tell stories. Matthew began her career as a still photographer, but she has used a blend of stills, moving images, and sound to create a more immersive experience.

The works at the exhibit draw from archival photographs for inspiration and portray the legacies of colonisation. In her piece Open Wound, Matthew dives into children's memories of the 1947 Partition using still photography, photo animation, video, and sound. The piece is a vintage book embedded with an iPad that tells stories using family photographs and reenactments with excerpts from interviews.

Depicting American Indians and Indian Americans, this series is Matthew's reply to a question she's asked as an immigrant in the US: "But where are you really from?"

Memories of India is a piece with dreamlike black and white photos taken with a small plastic Holga camera that captures whatever spoke to Matthew during her annual trips to India from the US. Through Fabricated Memories, the artist uses her family snapshots from a trip to England after her father's death. The events seem realistic but did not occur, and Matthew has fabricated images, as the name suggests. They depict Matthew's memories of her father who died of lung disease. The entire piece is presented in a book that's bound in paper made from tobacco leaves and housed in a cigarette box stained with tobacco juice.

Exploring identity in An Indian From India, Matthew answers the question: "But where are you really from?" The artist has taken the "exotic" portraits of native Americans photographed and mimicked them by recreating the scenes with herself. It's an attempt to reverse the colonial gaze evident in photographs of Indians taken by the British.

The range of technologies used to explore elements of cultural identity is what makes each narrative more distinct than the next, keeping you glued till you are ready to walk across the hall and onto the next body of work.

WHERE: Special Project Space, Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum
WHEN: Till October 27