Justine de Penning

History once shifted, justifies a future; who is to say who belongs where. In 1780 a Marie Sice married a Pierre de Penning in Our Lady Angels Church, Tranquebar. In this photography based performance work, artist Justine de Penning traces her roots in India dating back to the early 17^th Century (1712). She uses the colonial stereotype to re-visit her ancestral town and reframe the historical myth of the white woman as a tragic exile in the colony (as obstacle in the process of the masculine imperial enterprise) to create a shift in the focus towards a new kind of construction of identity, a failed nostalgic journey that plays with place and time. 

Justine de Penning

Jaya Kumar

Shuchi Kapoor

Sathya Ganapathi

Has a broken idol lost its power?
Broken idols and torn printed God photos are seen in street corners, under the trees, outside the temples... They are kept aside or removed due to breakage of some body parts or torn corners. Offering prayers before broken idols is considered inauspicious and also believed to bring bad luck because the idol/photo has lost power. Yet, people continue to treat them with respect wherever found offering flowers, lighting lamps,…

is it FEAR?  RESPECT?  SENTIMENT?  THE POWER?

Sathya Ganapathi