Exhibition
13 December 2022 - 10 April 2023
CPB Foundation and Ffotogallery Wales are thrilled to announce the Communities of Choice showcase opens on 13 December at the Kochi Biennale 2022 as an invited exhibition at the TKM Warehouse. The exhibition space is open daily, from 10am - 6pm IST.
This India-Wales connection was established in 2018 with the stupendous support of the British Council via the Imagining the Nation State Grant that grew into a fantastic partnership. Furthermore, the project won the India/UK Together, Season of Culture Program, which has made this show and project possible across the years. The showcase brings together the works of Imagining the Nation State Grant from phase 1 of this collaboration and the Communities of Choice open call from its phase 2. This collaboration and project has been made possible by the tremendous support of the British Council.
Now available as a 360 degree virtual tour
Concept Note
Who am I? Where do I belong? Do I belong to a community?
Do I belong to many?
These are a few underlying questions we pose through the showcase Communities of Choice.
Today, given our socio-political climate, finding a sense of belonging and community is essential to keep us moving forward. There is little doubt about our pivotal role in shaping the present situation – be it the universal health disaster we are living through, the fast-growing authoritarian regimes, or the irreparable environmental damage - we are the cause. Yet navigating these challenges has witnessed our evolution as one of the more compassionate and empathetic, tolerant and inclusive versions of our kind.
Communities of Choice is an exploration of this single, paradoxical global community we are, willingly or inevitably, fortunately, or helplessly, a part of. We are confronted with our capacity to cause violence; both in the literal sense of the word and in the form of long-term systemic trauma that for instance, caste-based segregation afflicts. We are given visual tools, humorous and thoughtful, to discover a community that exists primarily in the virtual form; sounds, texts and illustrations to understand the varying intimacies shared within communities. One work provokes us to observe the importance of a space/place in our lives, and another to question and rediscover our roots.
We are part of a web of interwoven communities. Some we have the privilege to choose, while others are simply assigned to us. While we carry on in this pursuit to discover - Where do we belong? We leave you with an extension of this enquiry - Why do we choose our communities? What do we contribute, and what do we receive? What does it mean to belong to a community?
‘Communities of Choice’ is an India-Wales collaborative project in partnership with Ffotogallery (Wales), made possible through the India-UK Together Season of Culture Program by the British Council.
- Text by Mitul Kajaria
