THURSDAY, MAY 16, 2024
Believe it or not, one of the highest-profile art events that will take place anywhere on the planet in 2022 was conducted earlier this week at the 92-year-old Saligao Institute, when Dayanita Singh launched Let’s See, her brilliantly innovative new “photo-novel” that is fresh off the presses in Germany from the imprint of the great Gerhard Steidl, who is himself the most sought-after art publisher in the world.
It has been an unprecedented season of triumph for the artist, and - by implication - for India. Just last month, it was announced that Singh won the 2022 Hasselblad Award, which makes her the first South Asian to be honoured with the very highest prize in photography, in the company of all-time greats like Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank and Sebastião Salgado. A few days later, a massive retrospective of her work opened in Gropius Bau, the stunningly beautiful 19th century Berlin landmark.
Still, when it came to launching the unique, ingenious Let’s See– unquestionably another landmark achievement– the artist didn’t do it in Berlin, or the Steidl headquarters three hours away in Göttingen, or even in New Delhi, where she grew up and her mother still lives. Instead, Singh returned home to celebrate in the Goan village where she has resided part-time for over two decades, during which she has gracefully integrated into the robust, resilient cultural fabric of Saligao in meaningfully heartfelt ways.
To be sure, while huge credit is due to Singh for the unobtrusive and supportive manner she has become an intrinsic part of her vaddo, this is a Saligao story first and foremost, and just the latest chapter in an astounding annals of globalisation. In fact, as I myself pointed out 15 years ago in the now-defunct Time Out, after Singh put out her first Steidl publication - the slim, luminous and deeply poignant Go Away Closer - she isn’t even the first artist of global significance to make art history from this location: “There is a curious parallel to Goan painter Francis Newton Souza’s similarly original notebook - Words and Lines (Villiers, 1958), the core of which also grew out of a long period spent mostly alone in an old house in Saligao.”
At that time in 2007, when no one was paying much attention to this highly unusual engagement between an artist and her adopted village, or even trying to understand the profound creative insights that were slowly coming into focus there, Singh inscribed my cherished copy of Go Away Closer with a confessional: “A long time ago – a Delhi photographer walked the streets of Saligao. Here she met people she could not see. In time she bought the house of one of these people, Dr. D’mello, conductor of the Saligao Symphony Orchestra.”
What the artist is recounting is the aftermath of her first forays into Saligao, where she had been living with her then-boyfriend (they broke up before Go Away Closer was published). Unlike many other places, she was welcomed everywhere, and took many photographs of families. Then she hosted an exhibition called DemelloVaddo (she says it was “a made-up name”) in the Saligao Institute, with the usual Goa village festivities. During that event, someone told her there was indeed a DemelloVaddo in Saligao, and her burgeoning love affair with the village should extend to living there.
That is when Singh’s life began to dovetail with her artwork, in ways that are hard to explain – they have to be seen and experienced to be even half-way understood. She wrote in my copy of Go Away Closer that “her photos of unseen people hang in the front room [of her house, where] musicians make recordings of sounds barely heard. Friends say there is a drug in the water as they settle into vilambit [a very slow tempo in Hindustani classical music] mode.” Eventually, entirely seriously, she started using DayanitaDemello as her name on Facebook.
What is going on? Can anyone marry their home? Is it possible that Dayanita Singh is an artist of Goa, whose work cannot be understood without connecting the dots to Saligao? In the simple nativist logic we were brought up with – and as another artist of Goan origin, who is in Lisbon at the moment recently asked me – can someone’s home village change?
It would make no sense to churn out glib or easy answers to any of these questions (except the last one: yes, of course our home villages can change, and regularly do even in traditional Goan reckoning). Instead, it’s worthwhile to dwell upon the outstanding framework built by the Saligao Institute, where Goans who settled all around the world came together over generations to create and nurture a democratic space where all members are equal, and everyone is welcome.
In this regard, it’s most useful – crazy at it may sound to any art world maven – to understand Dayanita Singh’s book launch in the context of the rollicking, brilliant Made in Saligao weekly community market that has established itself as an unbeatable platform for – as they describe it themselves – “the ladies of Saligao to display their wares”.
There’s great food, every kind of home-grown produce, all manner of handicrafts, and endless supplies of good cheer. Check it out, and of course it all makes sense. Naturally, it was the right and most suitable place for another lady of Saligao to display her own handiwork – it makes no difference this particular offering was custom-engineered in Germany on bespoke paper, with the world’s most meticulously conceived binding.
There is lot more to be said, understood and acknowledged, but what you must know is that every element of the Saligao Institute’s wonderful Pustakachem Fest went wonderfully well on the sidelines of the community market this Tuesday. When the sun went down, another table was added to the line-up, and proud and happy Saligaokars celebrated one of their own in the way she cherishes most. It revealed another essential truth: India’s greatest living artist is herself rather profoundly Made in Saligao.
