Panaji, Dec 19 (PTI) Veteran photographer Dinesh Khanna would often think of taking his daughters to his ancestral home, but would be let down by the futility of his thoughts as both his parents came from
Pakistan.
The longing for the home that his parents left behind and the wish to introduce his daughters to his roots culminated in Khanna's show on the banks of the Mandovi river as he invited five photographers and posed the question: “Feeling Home. Where is Home?”.
The show in the Art Park here, featuring Avani Rai, Assavari Kulkarni, Indrajit Khambe, Anurag Banerjee, and Zahra Amiruddin, is one of the group exhibitions by participating artists at the ongoing 10th Serendipity Arts Festival that explores the idea of home, memory, and belonging.
“Home, it seems, isn’t just a physical place. Instead, it’s a powerful emotional state: a place we either intimately belong to or profoundly long for. This core idea forms the very basis of this exhibition.
“So there's a sense of longing for a home or there is a sense of belonging to a home. And it doesn't have to be a physical structure. So, that is the only note which I gave to these five photographers. And I didn't tell them, ‘this is what I want you to do’. Just go with this and now you interpret for yourself,” Khanna told PTI.
While Rai looks at her Punjabi roots in black and white photos of young Sikh women, Khambe's idea of home lies in the verdant landscapes around his home in Maharashtra's Sindhudurg.
"When I photograph the landscape around my home, I feel an absolute sense of ownership over the entire scene: the trees, the mountains, the rivers, and the sky. The landscape I step into to take a photo feels like it belongs to me, and I never hesitate to be a part of it,” Khambe wrote in the text accompanying his works.
Rai reflected on the idea of home in a Punjab that “exists in fragments; in walls that have absorbed the weight of laughter and loss, in courtyards that remember footsteps long vanished, in fields that hum with voices of those who left”.
Amiruddin's works – photos of the horizon across the Arabian sea from Mumbai and the Aegean sea in Greece printed on fabric – are stretched in the backdrop of the gleaming Mandovi river in a way that all three become one.
Living in Paros, Greece, in 2018, Amiruddin was separated from her partner in Mumbai. Staring out at the horizon of the Aegean sea, she would think: “in an alternate universe, it connects with the waves of the Arabian”.
“Over the years, after returning to Bombay, I find myself at the edge of the promenade at Marine Drive looking for familiar hints of a deep blue. Between two seas, on two islands, I find solace in the whispers of water that holds my secrets,” she writes in the text.
While Khanna’s curation sparks an inquiry into the meaning of belonging and displacement, “Home is Where the Heart is” offers a range of perspectives on how home is imagined, represented, and contested through the mediums of handmade craft.
Kristine Michael, curator of the show at Azad Maidan, said that this exhibition was an invitation to think about home “not as a fixed structure but as a vessel for memory, emotion, and belonging”.
“Craft became the language through which these ideas unfolded - in clay, fibre, metal, and textile. Each piece carries a trace of lived experience, reminding us how the handmade anchors our sense of place,” she said.
In “Woven Home”, Ismail Yusuf Plumber explores vulnerability, connection and the architecture of the self. To represent the dualities of our lived space – security, creation, and exposure – Plumber uses the rigidity of copper mesh against the fragile transparency of fused glass in creating small human figures who struggle and search for belonging within the woven structure.
Ragini Deshpande turns the phrase on its head, for her the heart is the home. In a flowing gown crocheted out of crimson metal wire, Deshpande has placed a heart of ceramic in an exploration of “impermanence”.
A documentary filmmaker who started working with ceramics only six years ago, Deshpande said the heart holds the memories “like a vessel” and the wire, even when twisted and turned, also retains memory of the shape.
“I chose wire because even though it's a dead substance and inert, it retains memory. And working with crochet has a lot of my mother's memories of her doing knitting, sewing, and other such crafts, which were part of our home as we grew up,” she said.
Srila Mookherjee was drawn to the image of a nest while exploring the emotional and communal aspects of a home, Conceicao Perpetua Godinho in her work, “Janela de Goa”, created a crochet tapestry depicting a window in Goan homes.
“It represents the Indo-Portuguese architecture in Goa. It used to be the main artifact of those homes with the oyster shells, which used to filter light, and it was embedded in a frame of teak wood, which is very rare to find nowadays.
“But the window to me is also about memories of home. In the olden days people would sit by their windows and have chats with their neighbours, and that's exactly why we have this installed here,” Godinho said.
The 10th edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival opened here on December 12 with over 40 curators across disciplines of visual arts, crafts, theatre, dance, music, photography and culinary arts.
The 10-day celebration marks a decade of celebrating multi-disciplinary arts, shaped by the expertise of veterans of their respective fields, including poet-art critic Hoskote, theatre director Anuradha Kapur, Bharatanatyam dancer Geeta Chandran, music director Ranjit Barot, art curator Rahaab Allana and food historian Odette Masceranhas.
The festival ends on December 21. PTI MAH
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