PIX

PIX is a photography quarterly that functions on the basis of an open call for submissions. The call is based on a different thematic every quarter.

Every issue culminates in a launch and exhibition at the Max Mueller Bhawan, New Delhi. PIX is about investigating and engaging with broad and expansive fields of contemporary photographic practice in India, ranging from the application, conceptual standing and adaptability of photography to its subjects: its movement, transmission, appropriation and distinct relation to the allied arts. PIX, the

title and thematic for a photography quarterly, is a premise for how photography, as an evolving medium, has revealed the world in tangible as well as incongruous terms, allowing viewers and practitioners to question the photographer’s subjectivity together with the camera’s ‘framing’ of time and space (its ability to reveal, censor, alter and re-orient). The publication seeks not only to present photography in temporal, spatial or historical terms, but also in personal, self-conscious and aesthetic ways. The structure for PIX will be consciously based on practices, technologies, curating and circulations of photography in India today. It seeks to contemplate photography in the present and the predicament of a generation influenced by the digital medium.Photography has come to be viewed as a means of the everyday, in possessing the power to influence us and even lead us astray. Images are now animated beings, with desires of their own and have started being cast into contemporary notions of picture theory associated with the visual arts, literature and mass media.

05/07/2022

Come and visit the MYOP space in the Cour de l'archevêché in Arles at Lukas Birk’s table where select PIX issues are on display for viewing and ordering.

birk

03/07/2022

We are delighted to share that a selection of PIX issues will be present for viewing and ordering at Les Rencontres de la Photographie Arles 2022!

Find us at the MYOP space in the Cour de l'archevêché in Arles at Lukas Birk’s table from July 4 till July 10.

birk

02/07/2022

We are excited to share that members of the PIX editorial team will be participating on a panel discussion titled ‘Nostalgia and Empire: Exploring South Asian diaspora perspectives in photography and publishing’ at Collège Saint Charles on July 7, 3.30pm onwards. The discussion is a pop up at Les Rencontres d’Arles, 2022.

Posted • Editions JOJO at Les Rencontres d’Arles
Thursday, July 7 - Friday July 8
We will be in Arles next week with books from in and around India in addition to Editions JOJO titles !
JOJO will organise a panel discussion with Kalpesh Lathigra (), Rahaab Allana(), Sunil Shah (), Tanvi Mishra () at College Saint Charles on Thursday at 3.30pm. We will address concerns around South Asian representation, looking at the photobook as strategy with a specific focus on the impact of nostalgia on identity and politics.
The panel will be followed by book signings with Kalpesh Lathigra and Kaamna Patel 5.30pm onwards
Come by !

13/04/2022

As part of our 18th Volume, ‘Passages: a subcontinental imaginary’, we are delighted to have featured artists Rajat Dey, Zinnia Naqvi and Yask Desai join us in conversation on their individual practices, focussing specifically on their contributions to the issue.

In this extended discussion, the speakers create greater awareness and porosity around the understanding of ‘location’ as a key variable in practice, by focussing on family archives and thereby developing a more inclusive approach to the meaning of South Asian identity - one that transcends physical borders and nationalities.

Watch the discussion on our YouTube channel, link in bio.

This issue of PIX is supported by Art South Asia Project.

05/04/2022

Join us for an Instagram Live on 6 April, Wednesday (tomorrow) at 5pm IST for a conversation between Sofia Karim (), Veeranganakumari Solanki () and Tanvi Mishra () on ‘Turbine Bagh’— a joint artists’ movement against fascism and authoritarianism, initiated by Karim.

In ‘Turbine Bagh’ Karim forays into the space of social activism following her activist-photographer uncle, Shahidul Alam’s abduction and subsequent imprisonment in Dhaka. Taking the lead role in the Free Shahidul Campaign, Karim contributes to a series of protests through images, text and signs.

‘Passages: a subcontinental imaginary’ features an interview with Karim by Veeranganakumari Solanki, where Karim reflects on the impact of Alam’s imprisonment and the ongoings in the subcontinent which led her to build ‘Turbine Bagh’. She also addresses her form of activism which keeps her connected to the subcontinent, Karim explains in the interview, “As a British-Bangladeshi, why is my work centred on Bangladesh and India? It is because that work makes me feel alive. I have felt connected to Bangladesh all my life. The connection goes beyond language, but it also has something to do with escaping the prism of racism, Islamophobia and feelings of alienation. The activism came later. The horror of where we are—politically and socio-culturally—in both countries cannot be overstated.”

This issue of PIX is supported by Art South Asia Project.

01/04/2022

As part of our 18th volume titled 'Passages: a subcontinental imaginary', we are happy to share the work of Anuj Arora. Arora’s ‘Unsettled Identities’ is a project focusing on the lives of Rohingya Muslims, one of the most persecuted minorities in the world and an overlooked community in India.

His associations with the community arise from his own family narrative, with grandparents who fled Lahore in 1947 during the violent Partition. He recounts, “I grew up hearing stories about all that they had left behind, how difficult it was for them to rebuild their lives in Delhi as a part of them was still in Lahore.” This “inherited memory”, and the everyday proximity to the refugee camps induced Arora to engage larger humanitarian predicaments surrounding forced migration.

Anuj Arora is an independent photographer based in India. He studied visual communication and worked as an Associate Visual Designer in Delhi before moving to photography. Arora was mentored by Bharat Choudhary at Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts and Communication in New Delhi, where he pursued documentary photography. His work has been exhibited by Prameya Art Foundation as part of PRAF Discover and he was a finalist of TOTO Photography Award 2020. He won third place in POY Asia in the Covid Expressions category for his work Portrait of My Mother. He was one of the participants of Missouri Photo Workshop Hometown Edition 2021. Arora has been documenting issues of migration in Delhi as a long-term project.

Stay tuned for more artist previews. The issue is now available to browse on our website, link in bio.

This issue of PIX is supported by Art South Asia Project.

28/03/2022

As part of our 18th volume titled 'Passages: a subcontinental imaginary', we are happy to share the work of Ankan Kazi. Through his text contribution to the piece 'Scissors and Glue', Kazi explores Rajat Dey's work and the ideas of memory and family histories interlaced within it. Kazi writes, "The project attempts to recover the loss of a cohesive past with creative acts of screening, superimposing, cutting and pasting. The work of memory is used as a reconstructive tool against the broken, unstable ground of history in order to engage with the narrative of an emergent, new life."

Ankan Kazi is a writer, translator and PhD scholar at the Centre for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. His writings on art, literature and culture have previously appeared in The Wire, The Caravan Magazine, The Indian Express and Jamini. He is also a contributing writer for ASAP Connect, a platform for critical writing on photography and lens-based media in South Asia.

Stay tuned for more artist previews. The issue is now available to browse on our website, link in bio.

This issue of PIX is supported by Art South Asia Project.
ankan

25/03/2022

As part of our 18th volume titled 'Passages: a subcontinental imaginary', we are happy to share the work of Sambasiva Rao and Vijai Maia Patchineelam. In 1967, having completed his degree in Geology, Sambasiva left his town of Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh to pursue his higher studies in Europe. In 1972, Sambasiva began recording his life in images, building a photographic archive spanning three decades. In 2005, Sambasiva’s son Vijai, began to digitize a few slides as well as some of the printed photographs. This was the beginning of a process that crystallized into the book “Samba Shiva: The Photographs of Sambasiva Rao Patchineelam”. The publication is an amalgamation of his multiple identities - as a Brazilian and Indian. In the book, Sambasiva, a scientist by profession, assumed the role of the artist/author while his son Vijai, who is an artist, became the editor. 'Passages' presents another manifestation of this collaboration further explicated through an interview with Tanvi Mishra.

Sambasiva Rao Patchineelam was born in Rajahmundry, a small town in Andhra Pradesh. He graduated in Geology from the Andhra University in 1966 and then moved to Europe in 1967. He did two post-graduate courses between 1967-69 in Austria. He then went to Germany, where he received his Master’s Degree in Mineralogy—in 1971, after which he moved to Brazil. He went first to Salvador, as a Visiting Professor at the Federal University of Bahia. As a Professor at the Fluminense Federal University, he supervised numerous Master’s Theses and doctoral degrees until his retirement in 2013.

Vijai Patchineelam’s artistic practice focuses on dialogue between the artist and the art institutions. Placing the role of the artist as a worker in the foreground, Vijai’s research-driven artistic practice experiments with and argues for a more permanent role for artists—one in which artists become a constitutive part of the inner workings of art institutions. This displacement of roles is part of a larger trajectory that he follows in his PhD research at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp.

The issue is now available to browse on our website, link in bio.

20/03/2022

As part of our 18th volume titled 'Passages: a subcontinental imaginary', we are happy to share the work of Uzma Mohsin. ‘Love & Other Hurts’ presents a psychological map of the lives and experiences of British-Punjabi and Indian Punjabi women over the last 70 years. It draws upon personal accounts of love and longing, family bonds and cultural traditions to highlight the struggles of the diaspora and their counterpart back home. Mohsin’s work, displayed earlier in the Uk and India, uses literature, personal photographic archives, memorabilia and found objects to relay accounts of women, who also use a film camera to recount their experiences. Many of the images are double-exposed as a mesh of experiences of both the artist and the subject.

Uzma Mohsin uses photography to unravel narratives of people and places as well as their histories. By looking at cross-cultural encounters and perceptions, her work tries to build a conversation around the idea of belonging. Her series of silver gelatin montages, ‘Songkeepers’, was featured in issue 243: ‘Looking Out/Looking in’ of Aperture magazine in 2021. She has exhibited both in and outside of India—her recent exhibitions include Girl Gaze: Journeys Through the Punjab & the Black Country, UK; Blast Festival, West Bromwich UK (2019); Ellipsis: Between Word and Image, Jawahar Kala Kendra Jaipur (2019); Ephemeral: New Futures for Passing Images, Serendipity Arts Festival, Panjim (2018) and India/Contemporary Photographic and New Media Art, FotoFest Biennial, Houston (2018). She is the recipient of the Alkazi Foundation Documentary Grant (2017).

She was born in Aligarh and has graduated from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India.

Stay tuned for more artist previews. The issue is now available to browse on our website, link in bio.

This issue of PIX is supported by Art South Asia Project.

14/03/2022

We are delighted to share that PIX Editors – Rahaab Allana, Tanvi Mishra and Philippe Calia – will be in conversation on the Global Photographies Network speaking about ‘PIX and the South Asian Imaginary’.

As PIX— conceived and launched in 2009/10 as a quarterly— now completes its 20th publication and 18th issue-based volume this March, we look back at the last decade and the trajectories this contemporary archive has charted over this time. Initially conceived as a discursive and exhibitionary exploration mapping contemporary photography and histories of the medium in South Asia, PIX has evolved over the years as a participatory editorial practice, a publishing platform and an avenue for critical discourse on the image and associated practices through an open-call and commissioned/nominated pieces.

While the notion of South Asia/n served as a broad contour for research and approach, the examination of this identity led to dialogues beyond physical borders and nationalities ascribed through governments and regimes. Instead, lens-based practitioners and independent authors’ response to the themes of each issue presented micro-histories, fictionalised trajectories and broadly, surveys of contemporary concerns and definitions of identity, belonging and citizenship. Over the course of building this transnational space, we question what it means to be a South Asian, and how that shapes the narratives that emerge from within/without.

The event will take place on Wednesday 16th March 2022 at 6.30pm IST. Zoom link in bio.

13/03/2022

As part of our 18th volume titled 'Passages: a subcontinental imaginary', we are happy to share the work of Sofia Karim. Karim’s activism focuses on human rights across Bangladesh and India. She campaigned for the release of imprisoned artists including her uncle, photographer-activist Shahidul Alam. In January 2020 Karim planned ‘Turbine Bagh,’ a protest at the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern museum, London, in solidarity with mass protests in India. She worked with artists across the world to create Turbine Bagh as both physical prints on samosa packets, and a highly charged Instagram account.

In her interview with Veerangana Solanki, Karim describes how Turbine Bagh has transitioned into a platform that adapts itself to other situations and campaigns in the region, such as 'Where is Kajol?' She also addresses this form of activism as something that keeps her connected with the region she identifies with, and as a part of the South Asian diaspora.

Sofia Karim is an artist and architect based in London who explores architecture as a language of struggle and resistance. She re-examines its ideals of silence, truth, beauty and transcendence through this framework. Her activism focuses on human rights across Bangladesh and India and artists’ freedom of expression. Karim is the Founder of Turbine Bagh, a joint artists’ movement against fascism and authoritarianism. Her work has been presented at Harvard University and exhibited in New York, New Delhi, Chicago, Houston, London and Chile.

Stay tuned for more artist previews and launch details.

This issue of PIX is supported by Art South Asia Project.

08/03/2022

As part of our 18th volume titled 'Passages: a subcontinental imaginary', we are happy to share the work of Priya Kambli. Kambli’s contribution arrives at a cross-cultural understanding through the formation and erasure of identity, seen in mixed media and composite images that creatively explore the migrant experience. She states, “The concerns that carry through to my current work continue my effort to think about themes of identity, migration, and loss as catalysts for dialogue.”

In a conversational piece authored by Tanvi Mishra, she talks about how the photographs, layered with flour, turmeric or kumkum, are imprinted with patterns and carefully crafted geometrical motifs, drawn from Rangolis or Kolams. “In working with the same material and objects as her father did in his baking, or her mother in the kitchen, Kambli activates her past."

Priya Kambli received a BFA at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette and an MFA from the University of Houston. She is currently Professor of Art at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri. Kambli’s work inadvertently examines the question asked by her son Kavi at age three: did she belong to two different worlds, since she spoke two different languages? She was the winner of the inaugural Aperture and Google’s Creator Labs Photo Fund and the Magenta Foundation’s Un-Stuck grant. She is also the winner of the 2021 Outstanding Individual Artist by the Missouri Arts Council, the state’s highest honour in the arts.

Stay tuned for more artist previews and launch details.

This issue of PIX is supported by Art South Asia Project.
priya

05/03/2022

As part of our 18th volume titled 'Passages: a subcontinental imaginary', we are happy to share the work of Mathushaa Sagthidas. Identity, authenticity and representation are important nodes of engagement for Sagthidas, a second generation Sri Lankan living in the UK. In her work, she often considers her parents’ upbringing, their experiences during the Sri Lankan civil war (1983 to 2009) and their personal suffering, even while trying to embrace her own ethnic culture and heritage.

This series titled, ஒரு தீவிலிருந்து ஒரு நகரம் or “A city away from an Island”, presents an array of imagery - one the one hand, handcrafted South Asian elements/maps, and on the other, her own generation’s experience of donning traditional clothing in fashionable ways, in order to rethink how to embody a sense of home.

Based in London, Mathushaa Sagthidas’ photography practice comes from a strong interest in fine art, contemporary fashion and styling. Sagthidas developed these skills by further studying Fashion Promotion at Ravensbourne University (London) and Fine Art Photography at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts (London).

Stay tuned for more artist previews and launch details.

This issue of PIX is supported by Art South Asia Project.

03/03/2022

As part of our 18th volume titled 'Passages: a subcontinental imaginary', we are happy to share the work of Rajat Dey. Dey states, “I grew up in a joint family in the 90s, and our wooden house was built in the late 80s, so there was not much difference in age between me and our house. My grandparents migrated to India during the 1964 East Pakistan riots. They didn’t have any clear memory of their old house in Bangladesh, and I don’t have any photographs of our old house in its entirety. When I was a child, my uncle and I used to make paper cut-outs and collages…similarly, I have tried to put these unknown pieces of memory together.”

Author Bakirathi Mani in her introduction states that, “Like the ventriloquist in one of Dey’s images, these composite photographs speak for a history that we cannot recover in full.”

Rajat Dey is a Kolkata-based photographer who has been working on a project related to his home and roots in Bangladesh (erstwhile East Pakistan). He attended the Angkor Photo Festival Workshop in 2019 under the mentorship of Katrin Koenning and Sadia Marium.

Stay tuned for more artist previews and launch details.

This issue of PIX is supported by Art South Asia Project.

01/03/2022

As part of our 18th volume titled 'Passages: a subcontinental imaginary', we are happy to share the work of Arpita Shah. Spanning India, East Africa and the UK, 'Nalini' explores the connected histories of Arpita Shah’s mother, her grandmother and herself. The series reveals ancestral intimacies across space and time, and how social and emotive trajectories emanating from memories and bodies are intertwined.

Accompanied by a text from Frank McElhinney, the author mentions that her photographs are made in Ahmedabad, Mahemdabad, Mumbai, Mombasa and Nairobi. "Shah’s pastel infused imagery with pink and blue as well as the occasional greens and yellows are soft and faded. For Shah, they hold associations with the warm light of both India and Kenya..."

Arpita Shah is a photographic artist based between Edinburgh and Eastbourne, UK. She also works with film, exploring the intersections of culture and identity. Shah spent the earlier part of her life living between India, Ireland and the Middle East before settling in the UK. This experience of migration is reflected in her practice, which often focuses on the notion of home, belonging and shifting cultural identities. Shah’s work tends to draw from Asian and Eastern mythology—using it both visually and conceptually—to explore issues of cultural displacement in the Asian diaspora.

26/02/2022

As part of our 18th volume titled 'Passages: a subcontinental imaginary', we are happy to share the work of Cheryl Mukherji. 'Ghorer Bairer Aalo' (The Light Outside Home) is an exploration of Mukherji’s origin and inheritance. This work explores the familial relay of those experiences which are drawn primarily from her mother. It deals with memory, mental illness, transgenerational trauma, and how they inform identity construction using mediums such as photography, text, printmaking and embroidery. Examining her mother’s personal history through family albums which she carried to the United States from India, her own images are explorations of domestic geography.

Cheryl Mukherji is a visual artist and writer currently based in Brooklyn, New York, working primarily with photography, text, and video. She was nominated as the 2021 Workspace Resident at Baxter Street at CCNY, New York, where she also hosted her debut solo exhibition in January 2022. Cheryl's work has been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian (US), Minnesota Museum of American Art (US), Huxley-Parlour Gallery (UK), Format Photo Festival (UK) and the Brooklyn Museum (US) among others. She has been the recipient of Capture Photography Festival’s Writing Prize 2020, Brooklyn Museum’s Award, South Asian Arts Resiliency Fund (SAARF), Firecracker Photography Grant 2020, and was a finalist for the Dorthea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize 2020. Cheryl holds an MFA in Photography from ICP-Bard College, 2020.

Stay tuned for more artist previews and launch details.

This issue of PIX is supported by Art South Asia Project.

24/02/2022

As part of our 18th volume titled 'Passages: a subcontinental imaginary', we are happy to share the work of Yask Desai. Desai’s series titled 'Telia' comprises archival material, documentation and the creation of self-authored photographs which pay homage to the families that migrated from undivided India to work as hawkers in rural Australia between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries. 'Telia' was the name given to Australia by a number of the family members who remained in India.

“I attempt to adopt a methodology that combines the study of existing subjective South Asian histories in Australia with visually based production and recovery that creates meaning, and offers a historically-oriented sociopolitical narrative concerning specific race relations in colonial Australia.”

Yask Desai is a Melbourne-based Australian-Indian visual artist who works with photography, video, archives and text. His work concerns itself with themes of place as well as collective and individual identity. Desai often combines historical and social research to explore cultural connections between imagery, history and constructions of identity.

Stay tuned for more artist previews and launch details.

This issue of PIX is supported by Art South Asia Project.

22/02/2022

As part of our 18th volume titled 'Passages: a subcontinental imaginary', we are happy to share the contribution of Ruchika Gurung. In this epistolary piece, Gurung writes to a stranger named Kesang about a series of photographs that arrived at the Confluence Collective's office and eventually became part of their archives. Based on Kesang's family albums, Ruchika pieces together an imagined narrative of Kesang and her family's life that traverses India, China, Tibet and Switzerland.

The Confluence Collective are a group of photographers and researchers working to create a common platform to consolidate visual and oral stories of the Kalimpong and Darjeeling hills, as well as Sikkim.

Ruchika is working at the University of Cambridge Museums, focusing on community engagement for their 'Legacies of Empire and Enslavement Project'. She is an educator and researcher from Kalimpong, who strongly champions participatory and creative models of learning. Having completed her doctoral degree in Film Studies at the University of East Anglia, she has taught Media and Cultural Studies at universities and worked on numerous outreach and community-based projects in India and England.

Stay tuned for more artist previews and launch details.

This issue of PIX is supported by Art South Asia Project.

21/02/2022

'Passages: a subcontinental imaginary' has been at press in Delhi for the last few weeks. We would like to thank the entire staff and especially Kamal Arora, the owner of Naveen Printers (Okhla), for working tirelessly and relentlessly on this volume. PIX has printed over 20 projects with Naveen Printers over the years. A big shout-out to Srinivas Kuruganti for overseeing the offset production of this issue, which has been printed on paper we have used for the last 10 years...Rendezvous!

Stay tuned for artist previews and launch details.

This issue of PIX is supported by Art South Asia Project.

20/02/2022

We are excited to announce the 18th issue of PIX, titled ‘Passages: a subcontinental imaginary’. To be launched on March 10, both online and in print, the issue addresses ways of expanding and globalizing South Asian representation by consolidating diasporic community perspectives in order to introspect around the politics of visualizing/curating/writing regional visual histories. Drawn from an open call for submissions, the photo-series selections and commissioned texts attempt to recalibrate the politically bound arena of South Asia into creative socio-cultural formations and links, further investigating new cultural histories in our present.

A new mapping of practitioner-led groups – such as the Confluence Collective (India) or even the DRUM magazine archive (South Africa), we question where/who is South Asia/n?, so as to develop themes and testimonies which chart socio-cultural shifts that are critical to re-imagining regional visual chronologies. With South Asian communities spread across the world, this project considers the entanglements of memory and space as tethered to ongoing migrations, to make visible a South Asia beyond its borders.

The PIX team would like to thank all our contributors (by order of appearance in the volume):

Artists: Ruchika Gurung and The Confluence Collective, Cheryl Mukherji, Arpita Shah, Priya Kambli, Harsha Pandav, Sambasiva Rao Patchineelam & Vijai Maia Patchineelam, Rajat Dey, Anuj Arora, Riason Naidoo and DRUM magazine, Uzma Mohsin, Zinnia Naqvi, Sofia Karim, Yask Desai, Nina Manandhar and Mathushaa Sagthidas.

Authors: Bakirathi Mani, Zhuang Wubin, Arnav Adhikari, Frank McElhinny, Anisha Baid, Tanvi Mishra, Ankan Kazi, Philippe Calia, Arushi Vats, Veerangana Solanki, Htein Lin, Samia Khatun and Sunil Shah.

We are grateful to Art South Asia Project for generously supporting this issue.

PIX team: Managing Editor: Rahaab Allana; Editorial: Tanvi Mishra and Philippe Calia; Editorial Assistants: Anisha Baid and Mallika Visvanathan; Design: Sukanya Baskar; Intern: Gulmehar Dhillon

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As part of our 18th volume titled 'Passages: a subcontinental imaginary', we are happy to share the work of Anuj Arora. Arora’s ‘Unsettled Identities’ is a project focusing on the lives of Rohingya Muslims, one of the most persecuted minorities in the world and an overlooked community in India. His associations with the community arise from his own family narrative, with grandparents who fled Lahore in 1947 during the violent Partition. He recounts, “I grew up hearing stories about all that they had left behind, how difficult it was for them to rebuild their lives in Delhi as a part of them was still in Lahore.” This “inherited memory”, and the everyday proximity to the refugee camps induced Arora to engage larger humanitarian predicaments surrounding forced migration. Anuj Arora is an independent photographer based in India. He studied visual communication and worked as an Associate Visual Designer in Delhi before moving to photography. Arora was mentored by Bharat Choudhary at Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts and Communication in New Delhi, where he pursued documentary photography. His work has been exhibited by Prameya Art Foundation as part of PRAF Discover and he was a finalist of TOTO Photography Award 2020. He won third place in POY Asia in the Covid Expressions category for his work Portrait of My Mother. He was one of the participants of Missouri Photo Workshop Hometown Edition 2021. Arora has been documenting issues of migration in Delhi as a long-term project. Stay tuned for more artist previews. The issue is now available to browse on our website, link in bio. This issue of PIX is supported by Art South Asia Project. @anujarora789 @tanvimishra @philippecalia @artsouthasiaproject @somethings_novel @anishadaybaid @sukanyabaskar @itsguls #artsouthasiaproject #pix #pixpassages #photography #diaspora #southasia #southasianphotography #history #memory #community #nostalgia #Archive #transnationality #migration

As part of our 18th volume titled 'Passages: a subcontinental imaginary', we are happy to share the work of Sambasiva Rao and Vijai Maia Patchineelam. In 1967, having completed his degree in Geology, Sambasiva left his town of Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh to pursue his higher studies in Europe. In 1972, Sambasiva began recording his life in images, building a photographic archive spanning three decades. In 2005, Sambasiva’s son Vijai, began to digitize a few slides as well as some of the printed photographs. This was the beginning of a process that crystallized into the book “Samba Shiva: The Photographs of Sambasiva Rao Patchineelam”. The publication is an amalgamation of his multiple identities - as a Brazilian and Indian. In the book, Sambasiva, a scientist by profession, assumed the role of the artist/author while his son Vijai, who is an artist, became the editor. 'Passages' presents another manifestation of this collaboration further explicated through an interview with Tanvi Mishra. Sambasiva Rao Patchineelam was born in Rajahmundry, a small town in Andhra Pradesh. He graduated in Geology from the Andhra University in 1966 and then moved to Europe in 1967. He did two post-graduate courses between 1967-69 in Austria. He then went to Germany, where he received his Master’s Degree in Mineralogy—in 1971, after which he moved to Brazil. He went first to Salvador, as a Visiting Professor at the Federal University of Bahia. As a Professor at the Fluminense Federal University, he supervised numerous Master’s Theses and doctoral degrees until his retirement in 2013. Vijai Patchineelam’s artistic practice focuses on dialogue between the artist and the art institutions. Placing the role of the artist as a worker in the foreground, Vijai’s research-driven artistic practice experiments with and argues for a more permanent role for artists—one in which artists become a constitutive part of the inner workings of art institutions. This displacemen

As part of our 18th volume titled 'Passages: a subcontinental imaginary', we are happy to share the work of Mathushaa Sagthidas. Identity, authenticity and representation are important nodes of engagement for Sagthidas, a second generation Sri Lankan living in the UK. In her work, she often considers her parents’ upbringing, their experiences during the Sri Lankan civil war (1983 to 2009) and their personal suffering, even while trying to embrace her own ethnic culture and heritage. This series titled, ஒரு தீவிலிருந்து ஒரு நகரம் or “A city away from an Island”, presents an array of imagery - one the one hand, handcrafted South Asian elements/maps, and on the other, her own generation’s experience of donning traditional clothing in fashionable ways, in order to rethink how to embody a sense of home. Based in London, Mathushaa Sagthidas’ photography practice comes from a strong interest in fine art, contemporary fashion and styling. Sagthidas developed these skills by further studying Fashion Promotion at Ravensbourne University (London) and Fine Art Photography at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts (London). Stay tuned for more artist previews and launch details. This issue of PIX is supported by Art South Asia Project. @mathuxphotos @artsouthasiaproject @tanvimishra @philippecalia @anishadaybaid @somethings_novel @itsguls #artsouthasiaproject #pix #pixpassages #photography #diaspora #southasia #southasianphotography #history #memory #community #nostalgia #archive #migration #transnationality