Reviewed by Shyama Laxman
Indian visual artist and activist Poulomi Basu’s latest series Fireflies, curated by Bindi Vora and currently on display at Autograph, London, is an autobiographical exploration of trauma inflicted by patriarchal violence, while ‘navigating the claustrophobia of home, dreams of freedom, defiance, and transcendence’. Foregrounding her relationship with her mother, Basu’s multi-disciplinary body of work combines photography, video, sound, and installation.
‘Fireflies is a very courageous, personal body of work – to present yourself and your most cherished relationship to the camera and lay bare your trauma, your history with such passion and dignity takes strength and resilience. As a curator, my role is to care – care for the artist, care for the artwork, care for our audiences that will encounter the work’, says Vora who’s had a four-year long working relationship with Basu.
Having dealt with women’s issues in her previous series including To Conquer Her Land (2009-2012), Blood Speaks: A Ritual Of Exile (2013-2018),and Centralia (2010-2021), the decision to turn the camera onto herself wasn’t a sudden one for Basu, who developed Fireflies during the Autograph x Light Work artist-in-residence programme in Syracuse, New York in 2020.
‘It was brewing for a long time. I have been working on women’s underreported stories for 15 years of my career before this (Fireflies). It was propelled from my experiences of growing up in my house which was a very patriarchal, violent home where women with potential were always curtailed. It took some time before I felt like we were ready to face ourselves and put ourselves out there’.
On entering the gallery, one encounters nude portraits of Basu and her mother either as lone figures or embracing each other; sometimes defiantly staring into the camera, and sometimes apathetic to its gaze. ‘Fireflies is about my mother, but it is also about a universal world of trauma and resurrection. It’s about the cycle of life through the lens of a mother and a daughter. It’s about how violence is mostly intergenerational for women in patriarchal societies. Our bodies are sites of political warfare so why must we not take care of it, why must we not expose it’.
Combining elements of magical realism and science fiction, Basu situates her images within the closed confines of a room, amid nature with all its beauty, harshness, and sublimity, within a ‘parallel world’ indicated through images of glaciers printed on fabric and suspended from the centre of the gallery, through which a female silhouette can be seen peeking. ‘Science fiction is not about the future, it’s about the present’ says Basu. ‘I like to mix fantastical elements alongside real documentary work to create the tension of various possible universes that could exist beyond us and the idea that to make another world you need brave women’.
There is an image of Basu’s mother with bruises around her eyes, which when looked at in conjunction with the image of Basu with glitter around her eye gives a sense of the intergenerational violence and healing that Fireflies seeks to bring to the fore. Another one of Basu against the backdrop of rocks, arms outstretched and gradually disintegrating and going up into thin air as, what looks like, fireflies heighten the idea of freedom and transcendence.
In addition to the portraits, a video montage of a space mission plays in the background. The narrator ‘is the only survivor’ in a landscape that is ‘desolate’ and ‘primeval’, but it is ‘a brief flicker of freedom’ nevertheless. As the narration continues, it becomes clear that it’s a daughter talking to her mother, who had warned her about the shackles of tradition and the need to leave. The new planet that the narrator has found is where she will build a new home unburdened by such traditions. Just the video on its own, I feel, fully conveys the message behind Fireflies.
What does Basu hope Fireflies achieve? ‘We need to conquer our shame; we need to be able to speak out and open pathways for other women to do the same. Silence will never help anyone. I want people to realise that our voice is our strongest weapon, and that voice is manifested in Fireflies through our bodies’.
__________
Poulomi Basu: Fireflies is exhibited at Autograph, London 4 March – 4 June 2022. Quotes in the text above are taken from the writer’s interviews with the artist and curator, March 2022. Images © Poulomi Basu. Reviewed for Photomonitor by Shyama Laxman
