Madhusmita Bora, the lead artist of the exhibition speaks to ThumbprintNE about her endeavour
1. Why do you think are stories so important?
Our individual stories represent our entire existence. The ability to tell our stories empower us, especially those of us whose stories are not often heard. The opportunity to hear stories connect us, not just in the moment but existentially. When we lose our elders in our families and communities, we lose their stories, their wisdom, their memories and collectively we shrink. I feel all of us should be recording oral histories of our family and our community members.
2. Please tell us more about this project.
Local Voices: Memories, Stories, and Portraits, is a multi-faceted exhibit of the Indian diasporic community at Grounds for Sculpture (GFS) in New Jersey. This offering encompasses first-person narratives, images, and objects. GFS invited me as a lead artist and I created this work in partnership with 15 community members, and an amazing group of visual artists. Over a course of 10 months I traveled all across New Jersey, located our storytellers and nurtured relationships with them. The selected 15 individuals were then invited to share their stories, select an object of meaning, and craft their image with full autonomy, to create a powerful exhibition. Two Assam-born women, Farzana Rahman, a teacher and youtube content creator, and Asha Lata Devi, a Ph.D student at Rutgers University, have been featured in the exhibit.
As the organizing process continued, there were frequent conversations about the core theme and impact of storytelling from a first- person narrative. The storytellers were invited to participate in workshops, where they explored the power of sharing their lived experiences at GFS. They were encouraged to share as much or as little as they were comfortable sharing.
This project wouldn’t have been possible without the incredible support from GFS and the vision of Chief Audience Officer Kathleen Ogilvie Greene, who is also the co curator with Quentin Williams. Kathleen saw the need for this project after looking at GFS’s audience data and realized that 10 percent of visitors to the museum self-identified as Asians. We brainstormed for a while and decided to focus on the Indian community because NJ has one of the highest proportional Indian population concentrations of any U.S. state. The most current census estimates that 4.6% of New Jersey's population traces itself to Indian roots. Central New Jersey is emerging as the largest hub for Indian immigrants in the country.
A project of this nature and caliber wouldn't have manifested without the incredible team that came together. Kathleen trusted the process. I invited Danese Kenon, director of photography and video at The Philadelphia Inquirer. Danese put together a team of BIPOC women photographers for the portraits and stepped in as the videographer for the documentation. This project is what it is because of the 15 storytellers, Kathleen's leadership, Danese's artistry and tenderness, and the team of photographers and the GFS community who showed up with so much care.
3. How did you choose your subjects?
My intention was to celebrate the beautiful diverse tapestry that is India. In the West, there is a tendency to view India as a monolith: We are all Hindus, speak Hindi and eat spicy vegetarian food. I wanted to debunk that theory. I also wanted to challenge the model minority myth. Not each one of us is a math wizard, or a Spelling Bee champ. Not all of us are doctors and professors. Participants in this offering reflect a broad scope of this community through the lenses of language, religion, ability, region of origin, caste, education, immigration, and sexual orientation.
We have gas station attendants, homemakers, artists, teachers, nurses, high school dropouts. I wanted to do away with the colonial measures of success and create a space where everyone feels seen and celebrated because that is how it should be. Our 15 storytellers are incredibly powerful beings, who are superheroes for all that they have overcome in their personal journeys. I feel extremely honored and privileged that they allowed me into this sacred space of listening to their life’s journey. They come from different parts of New Jersey.
4. Did you try to involve different races, ethnicities, and language while choosing your subjects?
We have eight different faiths represented: Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Bahai, Jainism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism. We also have representation from the Dalit community and our storytellers speak a dozen different languages.
Care was also taken to have representation from the Indian diasporic community in Guyana and Trinidad.
5. Why is it so important to tell hyperlocal stories?
Because local is global. When we go hyper local and focus on individual stories, we find universal themes that ultimately connect us as humans.
6. Do you think telling stories of people can bring about social and political change?
Absolutely. Author Patti Digh says that “The shortest distance between two people is a story.”
I completely believe in that. I think when we share our vulnerable selves, and our deeply personal experiences, we realize we are all the same. The names, the characters and setting may be different but as humans we all live our lives pursuing love, mourning and learning from our losses and striving for resilience. Those became the core themes of this exhibit.
Local Voices is on view from April 23, 2023 to January 7, 2024 at the Domestic Arts Building at grounds for Sculpture in New Jersey. For more information: https://www.