Kochi, Dec 15: The ongoing Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB) facilitated an unexpected get-together of a Gujarati family that flourished in their business in this city over the past two centuries, courtesy an exhibition of their select photos being organised as part of the 108-day art festival.
Titled ‘Ummijaan: Making Visible a World Within’, the project in partnership with KMB’14 began Sunday evening at a Mattancherry venue which saw its two rooms slowly filling to capacity with four generations of the prosperous Abad family minus the over-arching presence of octogenarian Haleema Hashim even as her camera-shot images grace the three-and-a-half month show at the Aasiya Bai Trust Hall.
The Abad family, which runs big-time businesses in the country’s hospitality sector and seafood export, found its two decades of visual portrayal from the 1970s, following the creative eye of 20-year-old Nihaal Faizal who has curated an exhibition as great-grandson of Haleema, now 86 and fast losing memory.
Haleema’s children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren along with their spouses found the inaugural function of ‘Ummijaan’ as a special opportunity to refresh relations and update memories about their household which has moorings in the parched Kutch territory of present-day Gujarat.
The Kochi Biennale Foundation termed the exhibition as “an artful display of a fantastic archive”, and hailed the artistic spirit of both Haleema and Nihaal for his choice of 66 photographs at the show. “It is a very intimate Kochi imagery,” said KMB 2014 director of programmes Riyas Komu. “It is very reflective of our engagements at the biennale; it brings out the hidden stories and talents of the region.”
The exhibition venue saw the presence of all the people featured in the vintage photographs. It is another matter that some among them eventually decided not to be featured in the exhibition; so there is a black cloth over a couple of the frames. Exclamations such as “damn cute” and “is that you?” reverberated in the air as the subjects—now a few decades older—of the photographs pointed themselves out to friends.
There was excitement as the family, who belong to the Kutchi Memon community, greeted each other in Creole-Kutchi, a mix of Kutchi, Urdu and Malayalam. “Well it bears no resemblance to the Kutchi spoken in Gujarat today,” pointed out a member.
The women, largely dressed in abayas, welcomed visitors at the entrance to the exhibition.
“It is fantastic to be here,” said A R Mohamad Faizal, Nihaal’s father. “It is good to see the younger generation go back to and appreciate their roots. That is so rarely seen today. I am proud to be here.”
The 66 photographs—some black and white, some colour—were taken by Haleema, now bedridden at her marital home in Chullikal, Fort Kochi.
“We had the pictures for several decades without understanding the value of it,” said Tasneem Arif, Haleema’s daughter-in-law. “When my grandson Nihaal showed an interest in them, I went around searching and picking out the pictures from all our families. It is now exciting bring them together and to be a part of the whole biennale experience.”
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