In its third edition this year, GoaPhoto 2019 will be held from December 6th to 8th in
the picturesque village of Aldona, rich in its historic and cultural legacy. In
the inaugural year, in 2015, the festival was held in Panjim, in an attempt to
use large formats in public spaces, making it accessible for the public to
connect with the surrounding heritage precincts. A huge departure from those
early days, the festival in 2017 moved focus to a more introspective and
intimate realm, by showcasing these works within people’s homes in the charming
and historic village of Saligao; allowing a dialogue between photographic works
of art and the interior spaces that embraced it.
A complete antithesis to the typical
‘white cube’ gallery space, this innovative approach to working with “living
heritage” keeps the exhibition site specific – this time in the charming vaddo
of Quitula in Aldona and allows visitors the rare chance to access private
residences by foot and be part of a ‘walking festival’.
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Founding Director and co-curator, Lola
McDougall reveals, “GoaPhoto was conceived as a very different festival. The
inaugural edition in 2015, took place in public spaces around Panjim and it was
a good start because of its openness and the ability to reach public that does
not often visit art galleries. Despite it being a successful edition, we felt
that maintaining this scale and continued commitment couldn’t be done without
the support of the state government, which was really missing –and is still
missing. So we decided to go small and ‘adopt’ one village in each edition.”
She adds, “One of the key merits of the proposal consists in creating bridges
between fine art photography and everyday life while questioning the art
gallery as the privileged locus to experience art. In fact, we jokingly refer
to this edition of GoaPhoto as #afestivalinavaddo.”
The curatorial team this year also includes Goa based
photographer and writer, Akshay Mahajan and Portugal based artist, Angela
Berlinde. Concurrent with its theme of exploring the private, domestic and
voyeuristic impulses, the festival has a penchant to be more ‘middlebrow’ in
its approach.
A mix of intriguing and interesting projects are lined up in
this year’s event include a Curator’s walk on December 6th. The recurrent theme
of the ‘private and domestic’ is explored through a series of intimate projects
including Pamela Singh’s (aka Pamela Bordes) self portraits taken in the village
of Loutolim. Mexican photographer Tania Franco Klien uses the feminine body to
narrate stories of confinement and dystopia in the narrative of the American
dream gone wrong. Swiss artist, Anne Golaz will hold a performative reading
alongside the projection of her rural farm that she documented over 12 years.
In Aldona based, Shivani Gupta’s work, ‘Girl in a House’, a
woman metamorphs into an itinerant house and questions the very idea of home or
the lack of one, as is explored in Edgar Martins’ ‘What Photography and
Incarceration Have in Common with an Empty Vase’. Other projects include
Ricardo Cases’ ‘Dove Into the Air’ that looks at the tradition of pigeon racing
around his hometown.
The theme of Food & Photography includes Simon Bruegner’s
‘The Arsenic Eaters’ that questions the distinction between food and poison by
looking at the historical practice of arsenic consumption in Eastern Austria.
In this context, Indian visual artist, Rajyashri Goody’s, ‘Eat with Great
Delight’ brings to light the history of food and caste in India. On the last
day of the festival, The Edible Archives (a gastronomic project connecting
food, memory and art) will curate a meal using local produce of the Condillac
Farm in Aldona offering a delightful farm-to-table communal meal.
Connecting the rich, visual, historic and cultural legacy of
Aldona, a fascinating project to look out for is ‘Aldona Through Family Eyes’,
an artistic exploration of vernacular photography by Akshay Mahajan and Angela
Berlinde. They, in collaboration with anthropologist Pedro Manuel SobralPomba
of the Goa University have compiled interesting oral histories of people from
the village by collecting family photos and memorabilia.
Akshay Mahajan remarks, “Aldona is known as one of the richest
villages in Goa. As a result, it holds a rich historical and material culture.
There are many interesting stories, including the curious tale of the sole
survivor of the SS Britannia shipwreck, that we worked in collaboration with
journalist, Melvyn Mesquita.” He adds, “A part of this curation will be a
Museum display that will showcase archival photographs of the renowned jazz
trumpeter, Chic Chocolate while the other part will be an artistic impression
of these pictures.”
Ana Janeiro, another Portuguese artist will also display
pictures from her grandparents’ album between 1951-61, of the time they fled
from Portugal to Goa, escaping Salazar’s dictatorship.
McDougall also points out, “Our home venues retain their in situ
furniture. This encourages site-specificity while testing our ability as
curators and exhibition designers to work around them: not one nail is hammered
on account of the festival, as we want to minimize our intrusion while
investigating how the two aesthetics – the photographic and the domestic- engage
with each other.”
Perhaps it is zeitgeist in art to bring the local, the personal
and the process of introspection in focus. As Maria Aurora Couto – writer,
educationalist and famous daughter in law of Aldona who has been the guiding
light to this festival, succinctly sums it up, “Living in Aldona in an
ancestral house I am immersed in memories and connections – village, community,
family, individual and collective, old ways and creative beginnings such as
GoaPhoto. I have learnt a great deal from this young group of artists, their
commitment to research and creative curiosity and am amazed at the cooperative
effort of so many groups and individuals who have come together. I do hope that
our active participation will increase as also the support of government.”
Put
all this in a photo frame and you get a vivid picture of great minds and hearts
coming together, to preserve, protect and persevere.
