Read more about Dilpreet’s new photo series, A Home in the Constant Flux: A Call to the Verb Memory
We’re thrilled to announce that researcher, writer and ICAAD Artivist Dilpreet Bhullar’s photo series has launched today at the Simurgh Center in New Delhi, India.
The exercise to retrace the intangible memories entwined with tangible objects is what created the series of thirty-six images A Home in the Constant Flux: A Call to the Verb Memory. The central idea of this photo series is that during migration of people across geographies, the objects of love and necessity undergo the arduous ordeal, and that these, bearing the patina of age, create a desire to develop an understanding that personal histories are not isolated from the political selves. The seed of this photo series was sown during the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019. The photo documentation of the object of the refugees – Afghanis, Rohingyas and Tibetans, who are currently inhabitants of New Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir – along with the personal anecdotes recorded, traces the long history of India rooted in a diverse social milieu.
As the cartographic lines, in various shades of blue and white, overlap the digital images of the objects, it gestures at the fluidity of the memory only to find itself resistant to the burden of confinement. The aesthetic of distortion – in the form of borders, the viscosity of the blues, and the ballet of letters – epitomises the inevitability of embracing impermanence as one of the few constants in a life on the move. The element of distortion serves as a bridge between abstract and representation to encourage the viewer to navigate and map the work in order to question the boundaries of perception. This encounter with ambivalence extends to the viewer the sense of unpredictability experienced by the refugees in their everyday life.
“This photo series attempts to let the refugees take a step back into the past in the hope of emancipating both themselves and viewers from the conventional framework of concepts and categories,” said Dilpreet.
“The series is situated in crucial intersections of liberal economy and global identity, and opens up the space to ruminate upon the fragility of ideals in terms of inclusion, empathy and care. As each personal possession acts as a thread to suture the histories of the refugees and their experience of uprootedness, A Home in the Constant Flux: A Call to the Verb Memory strives to politically aestheticize not just the routes of migration, but the turmoil of emotions and the possibilities of assimilation encountered by the refugees.”
Dilpreet’s photo series was created as part of ICAAD’s Artivism initiative, where resident artists from around the world create collections that address issues of social justice, from the climate crisis to refugee rights. We believe that the arts play a powerful role in human rights advocacy, helping to bridge boundaries, challenge harmful narratives, and bring the voices and experiences of marginalized communities into the spotlight.
A virtual exhibit of Dilpreet’s collection is forthcoming, so we can share her photo series with audiences around the world. Watch this space!