Category: India
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Like mother, like daughter
Human life may have changed in many respects since prehistoric times, but at a certain level, the level of basic needs for the organism to survive, we are still the same, and not much different from other animals for that matter. We need food to eat, we need water to drink. For millions of people…
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Lakhudiyar
Already in prehistory humans must have been enchanted by the natural beauty of the Kumaon hills. They have left their traces, as we can see for example in the rock shelter the board on the photo speaks so nicely about. Lakhudiyar can be found between present day Almora and Jageshwar. It looks as if the…
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The Kumaon hills
66 % of the world’s population will live and work in cities by 2050. In India too, rapid urbanization is a continuing trend. In the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand where I spend most of my time when in India, I see the other side of this drift to the towns and cities: a steady exodus from the…
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The woman in the trees
A sound was echoing through the forest but I couldn’t make out where it came from. Then, all of a sudden, I saw a nymph moving high up in the oak trees. Surprised I called out: “What are you doing there?” She gave me a big smile and shouted back: “Je fais une chose tout…
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Legs in unison
Legs in unison The central image in the picture is one of 196 photos, fit in wooden screens, that together formed the installation by Dayanita Singh at the Kochi Biennale 2014. The Exhibition Guide says that the installation “is a year’s work presented as a series of interconnected movements in life and thought (…)”. For the viewer…
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Nostalgic bricks
It is amazing that precisely the work of one of the youngest participants of the Kochi Biennale 2014 evokes memories, images and emotions in me of the Kerala that I know of 40 years ago. Unnikrishnan C, born in 1991 in a family of basket weavers in Kerala, started painting the bricks of his parental…
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Through the looking glass
Up close: Light-rimmed, dark faces, all similar, each one different. Made by the artist out of paper pulp, rice paper, acrylic and art powder colour. With their wide open mouths they look startled, scared; but – according to the Exhibition Guide – they are initiates singing at their first holy communion. Two steps back: From…
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I am eyeye
I like eyeye. It is one of the words coined by Aram Saroyan that were written on walls at the Kochi Biennale. One eye overlapping a second eye, like in the vision through our own pair of eyes which enables us to see the world. I like lighght. To see, we need light in our…
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Global dust
One of the attractions for me to revisit Kerala after many, many years, was the international modern art biennale in Kochi of which the second edition took place in 2014/15. Another attraction was the International Film Festival of Kerala which, in 2014, was organized already for the 19th time in the State capital. My good old…
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Spinning progress
Seen from the sky Kerala seems to be inhabited only by palm trees. People and houses are invisible. Still there are many millions of them, hidden underneath the green cover of palm leaves. So it is not surprising that since a long time processing of coir – the fibrous outer husk of the coconut –…
καιρός remembered 