Artist Chandan Gomes makes photo essays, and present them in a book format that lends the whole method a special meaning. At the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, three such works of the Delhi-based artist are on display at the main Aspinwall House venue.
The work titled This World of Dew has landscape drawings. In fact, Chandan has recreated drawings from a notebook he found. The sketchbook that he found in a hospice in Jaipur belonged to a deceased girl. He then undertook a journey that lasted four years in search of the family of the young girl. The work, in the form of a book, includes her drawings and his photographs of the places that had inspired her. His efforts led to the publication of a book titled This World of Dew in 2015. It fetched the 31-year-old recognitions such as the Foto Visura Spotlight Grant and the INK Fellowship.
Chandan’s third work is one that has the biennale as its first venue.
Another photo essay on display at Aspinwall is There are the Things I Call Home. It is a compilation of Chandan’s photos of the objects in his childhood home. To the artist, it in an attempt to resolve the feeling of alienation he felt towards his family while growing up, says Chandan, a graduate from the famed St Stephen’s College in the national capital.
“I grew up in a single-room house in a relatively modest locality in Delhi. All the same, I studied in prestigious institutions catering to the elite,” recalls the artist, who currently teaches at the Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts & Communications, Delhi. “Each day presented me with stark contrasting experiences. That made it difficult for me to reconcile the identity of my two worlds.” The work was awarded the Oslo University College Fellowship in 2012.
Chandan’s third work is one that has the biennale as its first venue. It is a series of photographs he has been taking on his phone for the past five years. To the artist, they echo the haiku In this world; We walk on the roof of hell; Gazing at Flowers by Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828), a lay Buddhist priest, who wrote over 20,000 such short forms of Japanese poetry. “Actually, the work was never intended to be shown together as a project,” reveals the lensman. “Over the years, the series went on to document Issa’s life through the themes of violence, mental illness and loss of memory. In them, I search for beauty in everyday spaces.”
