review ofVidisha Saini at Matthieu Foss Gallery

by Rahul Bhattacharya on Tuesday, 31 May 2011 at 18:11

Over some years now Vidisha  Saini has been experimenting within various schools of subjective documentary photography. Dayanita Singh and Gauri Gill traversed from an objective photo journalistic approach to a more personal, and a more subjective understanding of documentation.  Vidisha on the other hand began her journey with the personal;firmly entrenched in her passion for mediumistic and thematic experimentation. From there she deals with the fact that she cannot escape the documentative impulse of photography as a medium.

Till Death Do Us Apart Is a series is a perfect example of Vidisha’s explorations of the subjective groove within contemporary documentary photography. She introduces the series as
“Looking at a photograph of oneself as a child, one asked, “Mumma, did I ever visit the beach when I was young?” Everything that is known of childhood is through these questions. Over the years, when cynicism for people takes over, objects and spaces become better companions to share emotions. It is through them one tries to answer, ‘What would I look like when I die?’”

Done (almost) immediately after her college days Till Death Do Us Apart has gives us a window to what Vidisha documents and what is that personal engagement with both the lens, and the object she captures and shows. As one looks at more (for example Toys “R”We?, it becomes clear that there is a strong impulse towards storytelling, and that objects for her are outside the animate inanimate boundaries. Both the above cited works were shot and put together almost parrely to Pratibimb and Showtime.
Vidisha Saini 2010
It is in this context that this exhibition finds its place in Vidisha’s story telling.  In spite of their large scale, and the spotlight of being her first solo, this series is actually just a part of a collection of stories she has been clicking, researching and representing over the years. The fact that the gallery chose to show this body as a first show, can be a bit misleading for the audience in understanding the various layers of Saini as an artist. The fact that these are the first body of her works to be shown in a major way tells us a lot about the idea of marketable photo graphs, and a strong fascination for the spectacle.



What is indeed fascinating is that even while dealing with ‘classical’ documentative  subject, the artist’s impulse it weave in the deeply personal, to make the project be a medium of telling a very personal story. Both the projects pretend to be anthropological in nature, yet they interest the artist not for the socio-economic or even cultural documentation mode.  For example, in the Pratibimb series, complexly by passing the current problems that theBeherupiya community face in terms of material and cultural survival, the interest is (almost) purely in the visual and in the performative elements.  The artists’ fascination for those 42 days in which theBehrupiyasadjust­ their man­ner­ism and garb accord­ing to the char­ac­ter they impersonate, and the fascination with such ritually time bound role playbecome the prime inspiration. Similarly is Showtime  the misery and the decay of contemporary circus is temporary suspended.  Vidisha’s childhood does not belong to times when circus was in its glory, so for her there is no decay. However in the circus the artists meets her love for the stage, and meets participants who have tangible stage anxieties. The sexiness, glory and nervousness of ‘show time’ lures Vidisha bringing out connections with other forms of expressions like performing arts that she is very close to.

Vidisha Saini 2010

Amongst all this hedonism of subjectivity and personal narratives, one should not miss out the kind of relationships  Vidisha builds around her subjects. The concept of play, and lens based dialogue are explored in various experimentations right since her earliest projects like  Cloud, Tree,Candy Floss (her self initiated workshop series with under privileged kids  using the lens and  photographs to make conversations, to translate personal experiences and as areaction towards a particular situation. )
Showtime in particular gets into a dialogue based mode by conceptually framing the series as “portraits of circus artist’s made a few minutes before or after their act.”    Exploiting the gaps between performing and posing, the series  tells the artist story about one’s altering identity, the co-existence of several, and the relationships between them.