Art

The Punjab Trilogy

by MAX KANDHOLA

Since the mid-nineties, I have embarked upon a personal odyssey in mapping my family heritage, Sikh Punjabis, dealing with my life and journey, a social and political mapping of living in England since my parents arrived in the 1950s.

Identity and the notion of home is still firmly imbedded in the motherland for the diasporic Punjabi. Rite of passage, rituals, belief, caste and mysticism, have played and performed their role within the psyche of first-generation Punjabis in England.

This influence and persuasion can be suffocating, misplaced and at times divisive, leading to insecurity. My family are successful in all forms of business, lawyers, accountants, doctors, property developers and the infamous corner shop. Second- and third-generation Punjabis are looking beyond the veil of scepticism and guilt and beginning to challenge preconceived ideologies and perception about identity, what Indian or Punjabi is in the 21st century, living in England.

My life is in England. My mother, father and brother have been cremated and have had their ashes placed within running water within the lakes and rivers of this country.

What is it to be a Punjabi in England? I speak Punjabi; understand the language. My mannerisms are English, yet when I speak Punjabi, the movement of my arms and head tend to elaborate and mimic the rhythmic tone and vocabulary of the forms and sounds generated by the Punjabi vocal cords. It's quite beautiful and liberating.

My personal insight and journey is through photography, which adds to the various chapters of contemporary art and literature, unfolding new narrative in placing diasporic Punjabis within a context of further critical discussion. My story is about home, England, my parents, death and dying, the Punjab and diaspora, homeland a new beginning, second- and third-generation Punjabis, and identities in England.

Using archival material, random snapshots and newly commissioned and personal work, I will be bearing witness to a family saga, spanning over several generations in discussing ancestral narratives.

THE TRILOGY

Illustration of Life (Dewi Lewis Publishing and Light Work, New York, 2003) is the first part of a trilogy, which began in 1996, in documenting his father's struggle with cancer, and his last moments of life, which also explored issues within Sikh ritual, immortality and death. In the final pages of that book are three photographs of Kandhola's father's ashes. In Punjabi tradition, the ashes are scattered in running water, a physical link re-introducing the body back into the land.

Using this as metaphor, Kandhola used death as a reference in his exploration of the Punjabi land as resurrection of the body, in Flatland: A Landscape of Punjab (Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2007), which forms the second part of the trilogy.

In Flatland: A Landscape of Punjab, Kandhola documented the Punjab landscape, researched over a period of four years (2003-2007). Using the backdrop of cities and uncharted villages, he has used the location of the rivers and the surrounding landscape as a metaphor in discussing aspects of Sikh Diaspora, the themes of memory and migration. The photographs in Flatland constitute a photographic discourse of isolation and arcadia, the fantasy of mythological and sacred places of cremation, a rugged terrain surrounded by meadows and pastoral land, rather than the reality of urban city life. The photographs refer to the historical symbolism of land, and through the juxtaposition of iconographic references, its association with Sikh Punjabis living in England.

In the final part of the trilogy, Roti Kapra aur Makhan, (Food, Clothes and Shelter), which Kandhola is currently researching, he will document the mundane and the vernacular, new family portraits and archive from the 1950s. The quote has been taken from a 1970s Bollywood film, and also within a social and political context referring to Indira Gandhi who used this verse to comment on the development and growth of the working people of India in 1970, and most recently by the late Benazir Bhutto for the PPP Pakistan People Party, that there will be bread, clothing and shelter for all.

Roti Kapra aur Makhan. The term is a metaphor for new beginnings, a cultural reference in discussing ancestral homes, ontology of the family through portraiture, and material culture. Mapping geographical roots and the topography of change from first- to third-generation Sikhs from Punjab. The narrative will present recognized and unfamiliar metaphors in discussing change and the mystical and mythological antidotes in referencing old and new ideologies of cultural change and extreme views and perceptions on life.

[Courtesy: We English]

December 3, 2008

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