Exhibition explores issues of racial discrimination

Reacting to the incidents of racial discrimination against African community in India, a group of artistes have explored the link between the culture of two nations in their search for answers to the problem.
Titled 'Coriolis Effect: Migration and Memory', the exhibition seeks to display the social, economic and cultural relationship between India and Africa.
Nestled in bylanes of Khirki extension, Khoj studios curated the 6-day long show which features photographs and a newspaper featuring African voices.
"Globally, we have witnessed the forced displacement of thousands of people from their homelands, and locally we have first hand experienced the trauma of re-location for African community.

"We are interested in the formation of memory due to this migration - both individual and collective. We have invited artists to look back at the past and comprehend the present. What happens to your identity when you lose your place of belonging? What are memories of home and place that you carry with you?," says Sitara Chowfla, who curated the exhibition at the studio.
Delhi-based independent photographer and urban researcher Malini Kochupillai, whose twelve page mock-newspaper 'Khirkee Voice' is being featured at the exhibition says, whenever she reads a headline with the word "Nigerian" in a newspaper it reflects a negative perception of the migrants.

"I started communicating with the African community in their intimate kitchens. I wanted to know more about their lives in the city. In conversations over many nights in these stuffy kitchens, I discovered more and more about how much we had in common- strong family values, profound religiosity and unshakable faith in God," says Kochupillai.

The newspaper brings to life the culture and traditions of the community at Khirkee.
Kochupillai says she picked up a newspaper to present her voice because it was an effective and free medium to communicate an idea from the eye of an urban researcher.
The artists in residence at Khoj worked for six weeks on a

wide variety of interpretations and spent time with local people to develop ideas for their artworks.
Indo-Caribbean artist Andrew Ananda Voogel based his work around the indentured labour trade from India to the Caribbean at the exhibition.
After the gradual abolition of African slave trade, the search for cheap labour spread to India and many men and women, including Voogel's ancestors, left to foreign shores leaving their families behind.
"The Carribeans and Indians have been living with Africans since past two hundred years therefore our culture, food and music has become a nice hybrid.
"In that way, I felt compelled to take on the issue. I wanted to look at things that are causing violence and disagreements," says the 33-years-old artist.

Photographs by Mahesh Shantaram explore some of the most intimate moments in the lives of the African community living in India.
Shantaram has been photographing them to bring into focus subjects of racial bias and discrimination.
"When I read about the mob attack against a Tanzanian student in my own city Bangalore, I was shocked. Since the incident, I have been going out to far flung neighbourhoods of Bangalore to meet African students.
"I learnt about their experiences and made portraits as a personal response to give them recognition," says Shantaram
For his project at Khoj, the artist has taken photographs of the African community residing in Rajpur Khurd Extension, New Ashok Nagar in Delhi and Jalandhar.

"'It's as if they don't accept us as human beings', is what I keep hearing amidst all the heart rending stories," he says.
Chibuike Uzoma, 24, has worked with paintings and photographs explores Delhi's bylanes in his artworks.
"The racial tension that many talk about, I don't set to look at it at all because I react to space rather than people. Any act of racism, I feel sustains because people tend to live in past, so I almost don't notice it. I share the idea that we all are racist, and we all have to find our ways to deal with it," says Chibuike.