Two artists create room for empathy

In 'Roots of the Earth', Akshay Mahajan and Prabhakar Kamble begin a conversation about invisibilised histories

- Avantika Bhuyan

At Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai, entering the two-person exhibition, Roots of the Earth, featuring works by Akshay Mahajan and Prabhakar Kamble, feels akin to stepping into a living, pulsating repository. It is one where erased histories are being liberated from rigid academic and sociopolitical definitions to be reassembled and retold.

Kamble's sculptures and installations, Chandelier and Utarand, feature objects such as cow bells, ropes, hooks and clay pots, which have long held caste associations, isolating their makers from the mainstream time and again. These objects bring to the fore the presence of caste markers in the everyday, and create a dialogue around the need not just to resist caste but also annihilate it.

In juxtaposition, Mahajan's collages of photos, text, sculptures and Hatima dolls made with the riverine silt of the Brahmaputra in People of Clay create a portrait of a community in Assam's Goalpara region, whose cultural markers and identity were subsumed into a broader regional identity during colonial rule and then post-independence. When viewed together, the two artists' works enter into a dialogue with one another.

"(They) rely on and thrive in communities and in the possibilities of the histories lived and experienced. They set out to challenge rigid sociopolitical formations to learn, heal and reclaim from the collective and the shared. Like the people of clay, our identities are constantly in a flux, evolving, not tied to lands and identitarian constructs," states curator-writer Mario D'Souza in the catalogue essay accompanying the show.