Business News/ Lounge / Art And Culture/ ‘Avan Lapli’: Reframing sites of history along the Indian Ocean
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There is an old-world quality about Shiraz Bayjoo’s works. It is as if the artist has added layers of colour to centuries-old images of fishermen, coastal trees, indentured labour, and more to create a new emotional landscape. A set of such works,—made using acrylic, resin, voile fabric, dye sublimation ink and wood—forms a part of the artist’s ongoing exhibition, Avan Lapli—his first in India— at Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai. The title of the show, translated as ‘Before the Rain’ alludes to a moment of pause and reflection just before the downpour. Using that as a metaphor, the Mauritius-born and London-based artist allows the viewer to mull over intertwined histories across the Indian Ocean, from Mauritius to Madagascar, along the Swahili coast to coastal India, that have led us to this moment in time.
There is an old-world quality about Shiraz Bayjoo’s works. It is as if the artist has added layers of colour to centuries-old images of fishermen, coastal trees, indentured labour, and more to create a new emotional landscape. A set of such works,—made using acrylic, resin, voile fabric, dye sublimation ink and wood—forms a part of the artist’s ongoing exhibition, Avan Lapli—his first in India— at Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai. The title of the show, translated as ‘Before the Rain’ alludes to a moment of pause and reflection just before the downpour. Using that as a metaphor, the Mauritius-born and London-based artist allows the viewer to mull over intertwined histories across the Indian Ocean, from Mauritius to Madagascar, along the Swahili coast to coastal India, that have led us to this moment in time.
Bayjoo, 45, arrived at this phrase while researching monsoon trade winds and oceanic currents along the East African coast. These had to be delicately navigated in order to avoid being shipwrecked, or trade off the cargo early to lighten the load home. “These trade winds and currents shaped the entire region, even the location of coastal settlements, and what was traded when and where. With this thought, the title alludes to the need to wrap up all affairs before it’s too late to reach home," states the artist. The show becomes pertinent at a time when the ideas of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ are being revisited as fluid concepts. It also offers a fresh look at how personal and public archives—including colonial records—can be used to explore complex relationships of migration, trade and the legacy of European colonialism.
Bayjoo, 45, arrived at this phrase while researching monsoon trade winds and oceanic currents along the East African coast. These had to be delicately navigated in order to avoid being shipwrecked, or trade off the cargo early to lighten the load home. “These trade winds and currents shaped the entire region, even the location of coastal settlements, and what was traded when and where. With this thought, the title alludes to the need to wrap up all affairs before it’s too late to reach home," states the artist. The show becomes pertinent at a time when the ideas of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ are being revisited as fluid concepts. It also offers a fresh look at how personal and public archives—including colonial records—can be used to explore complex relationships of migration, trade and the legacy of European colonialism.
Though Bayjoo’s work spans different media, including video, performance and text, it is the ocean, complete with its networks and histories, that takes centrestage. The artist remembers working with an indigenous artist collective in Tasmania, Australia, in 2018. While heading back home, the members told him how we were all connected by the sea, and not separated by it. Those words took him back to his childhood in Mauritius. “I never felt alone or isolated on our little island. In fact, I felt like I could skip across our archipelago to the coast of Madagascar and Zanzibar, maybe even Mumbai. We were never on the edge of a European world, but rather at the centre of our own," he says. “I have always felt connected to multiple coastlines, that each has an important story to teach about how our ancestors navigated the greatest calamities and hardships, and birthed a collective culture."
Archival material plays a key role in Bayjoo’s approach to his art. He often sifts through thousands of archival photos, looking for clues that break the ethnographic or colonial lens. “...sometimes mistakes by the photographer, the strength of the sitter or the land itself—through these we are given clues as to the real dynamic and the possible psychological realities experienced by our ancestors," he elaborates. “We can give space to small fragments to be reassessed by the viewer by repositioning them through different materials."
These works, focused on the dispersal of people, floral and fauna across the Indian Ocean to the slave ports of East and West Africa, then become sites of remembrance of this history of violence and displacement. And yet, the way he uses colour and reframes archival material, adds a touch of softness to these complex and difficult subjects. Women play a dominant role in the works in this exhibition such as Cleo and Four Sisters. According to Bayjoo, in Mauritius, it was the bonds of women that lent strength to endure the worst of the plantations. And yet the violence on women was almost never documented—it was almost as if there was no merit seen in it being written about by predominantly male authors. “In my works, we centre the strength of these women. They are memorialised, they stand strong and centred in re-appropriated historical frames, which would have restricted the very notion of their identity," he says. “By repurposing these framings to elevate their image and memory, we create a new language of strength."
Much of his research takes him to sites where supposedly ‘lesser-known’ events might have taken place—which may, in the longer run, have had an important impact on wider histories. Bayjoo revisits them, often documenting these on medium-format film. “In this way, my work does not seek out places with a pre-desired aesthetic but rather how the place can direct the language of the work. By shooting on film, I have to slow down and contemplate the atmosphere," he says. These are sites, which often hold deeply-traumatic histories, where the land has borne witness to the violence of extraction.
That trauma is embedded in the people, birds, plants, and more. The artist feels that it is important not to recreate that violence while unpacking and understanding these complex dynamics. “The act of witnessing and acknowledgement must not enter into a spectre of aestheticising trauma. Rather, one needs to create space for these histories of people who were often not considered worthy enough to enter official documentation," he adds.
A lot of his approach to trauma, and his engagement with different communities and their histories, comes from working with refugees, and those who have come from prison. “Like many young artists, my 20s were about figuring out my voice. I had the opportunity to become an artist in residence at a centre for the homeless– refugees and ex-offenders—where I led workshops for those, who were considered the hardest to reach by the social services," he elaborates. Those experiences affected him deeply, teaching him patience, how to listen and to understand people’s journeys, their trauma and challenges. It helped Bayjoo develop his own methods that would later lead to his research practice. “It ultimately led me back to Mauritius to understand the traumas of my own people, how the legacies of the past still endured, and how we expressed them in the way we carried our bodies, curating our homes and civic spaces," he says.
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