BHARAT SIKKA
Where The Flowers Still Grow
2019.09.18 > 2019.11.02
The state of Kashmir holds a mythic place in the mind of India. Long known as one of the world’s most beautiful mountain valleys, since the late 1980s it has become synonymous with a political and sectarian conflict which strikes at the very heart of India’s identity. Bharat Sikka first visited Kashmir in 2013, on a holiday with his family. While there, he discovered Mirza Waheed’s novel The Collaborator, which tells the story of a young Kashmiri man’s struggle with his own sense of self, buffeted by the exigencies of history and the present. This propelled Sikka to make numerous visits to Kashmir in 2014 and 2015, travelling throughout the region to photograph the people who live there, to attempt to make some sense of their dilemma through his own personal experience.
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The central core of “Where the Flowers Still Grow” is comprised of portraits, predominantly young men shot alone within the colossal grandeur of an unspoiled Nature, which seems to know nothing of national borders and political rivalries. The men stare at Sikka’s camera, which stares back at them, with a plea that their representations might break through a silence, might provide the one million words necessary to explain everything. We notice one specific rock or a flowering stalk within the image that feels as if it could be light-years away from both the photographer and his subject, implicating our own existential conundrum as the viewer of the image. Where do the questions and answers lie within this image of a gaze locked within another gaze?
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Having fused portraits of Kashmiri men with their landscapes, Sikka set out to record the more personal details of his visits, capturing not only objects found in homes but also dead animals, abandoned buildings, and elements of nature. These details provide a mise-en-scène for Sikka’s project, articulating a more nuanced interpretation of the region and its inhabitants. What we are ultimately left with is Sikka’s emotional response to his visits to Kashmir, the residual evidence of traumatic events, and the mute witnesses to the convulsions of history.
Sikka fuses the Kashimiri men he portraits with the landscapes where they live, showing “the colossal grandeur of an unspoiled Nature, which seems to know nothing of national borders and political rivalries”
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The list of images, sizes and prices can be downloaded here.
Bharat Sikka (b. 1973) grew up in India, working there as a photographer before studying at the Parsons School of Design, NYC, where he earned a BFA in photography. Establishing a fine art approach to the field of photography, Bharat documents contemporary visions of India. His portfolio consists of environmental portraits of Indian men, urban landscapes in india and a personal project on his family. Since his first exhibition ‘Indian Men’ at the artists space in NYC, his work has been featured in numerous national and international exhibitions, including one at the National Museum of India (2008). Bharat has contributed for magazines and publications such as New York Times, W, The New Yorker, i.D, Vogue, Vogue Homme International, Details and Time Magazine. Bharat now lives and works between Europe and India.
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This project was first presented on the frame of the Kochi Muziris Biennale, in Kerala, on 2016.
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