A young bride leaving her family behind in Goa to build a future in Kenya; the former Chief Minister
of Goa Dayanand Bandodkar gently petting a leopard cub on his lap; or the
photograph of the Goan dentist who extracted two teeth of Mahatma Gandhi;
within a small room on the first floor of the Old Goa Institute of Management,
Ribandar, these photographs in sepia, paint a vivid picture of the times of
yore.
Lina Vincent, an art historian and curator
with over 15 years experience with research, design, curation and public art
programming, and Akshay Mahajan have been working on the project since August
this year. After framing the rough plan of approaching families, they made a
preliminary list and also involved two research assistants – Divesh Gadekar and
Nishant Saldanha – to help with the outreach.
They
made contact with some 18-20 families but around 11 have been featured in the
exhibition. The families include Antonetta Fernandes, (Divar); Custodio M
Estibeiro (Panjim); Ravi Chari (son), Suresh Chari (brother) of late Pt
Prabhakar Chari (Altinho); Meera Kamat (Sanvordem); Ada Ribeiro and Armida
Fernandez (Divar/Bombay); Sanjay Bharne (Panjim), Justiniano Botelho, Lisbon
Studio (Panjim); the Barretto Brothers (Porvorim), Luis Franscisco Dias
(Panjim); Xeque Jamal Anwar (Hassans, Panjim) and Sonia Rodrigues Sabharwal (Margao).
“We have done video documented interviews with ten
families/individual representatives of the family. We also had others who
simply shared their albums and pictures, like Sandhya Bordawekar Gajjar
(Bordawe); Swetlana Cardozo and Ivy Pereira. As a team, Akshay and I, along
with our two interns have an organic way of communicating and meeting with
families, and on the whole, it has been working well. There is also great pride
when people talk of their ancestry,” explains Lina, the special project curator.
Photos, stories, oral histories, they all line up
“The most important part of the exhibition, along with the
photos, are the stories and oral histories that come along with them. The
families have very generously shared original objects connected with the
stories and photographs. Dr Luis Dias has shared the historical sanitation plan
of Old Goa made by his grandfather Colonel Doctor Victor Manuel Dias
(1892-1949), Director of Health Services in pre- Liberation Goa. Pt Prabhakar
Chari’s family has shared his original photographs, award and tablas; the
Bharne family the first receipt from the shop along with portraits; we have
books and hand drawn portraits copying photographs from the descendants of
Armando Menezes – Ada Ribeiro and Armida. Antonetta Fernandes (mother of the
Festakar Marius of Divar ) has shared personal photographs from three
continents; C M Estebeiro has shared a beautiful portrait clicked by him of his
wife and his award trophy. There may be around 25 objects, articles and other
things along with all the original frames,” explains Lina, pointing out to the
walls mounting these memories.
Dentist who extracted Mahatma Gandhi’s teeth & other stories
Besides
the photographs, there are interesting stories that have been unraveled at the
exhibition. “There were many interesting recollections – Meera Kamat spoke
about how she was the only woman to give a speech post liberation in Sanvordem;
the Barretto brothers shared the story of how their father, a dentist practicing in Nagpur at
that time, came to extract two of Mahatama Gandhi’s teeth. Ada Ribeiro spoke of
Armando Menezes and how the atmosphere of nationalism was strong in Dharwad,
where they grew up,” says Lina.
To
conclude, Lina hopes to be very committed to working with Goan artists and
collaborating with them to create more and more platforms for arts and culture
engagement. “I hope that 2020 will be a year for realising some of these
projects,” she says.
