A white tent pitched in the atrium of the India Habitat Centre looks like a place serving refreshments to attendees of a conference. However, in the evening, it is transformed into a venue for a video art installation.
“Five Rivers: A Portrait of Partition” is a documentary in cyclorama. Artistes Sheba Remy Kharbanda and William Charles Moss use the tent as a canvas to project the story. Five synchronised films are projected onto various surfaces of the tent, creating a conflation that crafts the narrative of Amrik Singh, a Punjabi/Afghani Sikh who at age nine left his childhood home in the months preceding the Partition. Videos of him telling his story, combined with visuals of landscapes and an audio that includes poetry and speeches, make for an interesting audio/visual spectacle. The tent is used as symbol of diversity, a congregational space that transcends the historical discourse.
Talking about the installation, Singh says the artistes bring out, in a very poignant manner, the pathos of being uprooted from one’s native soil. The use of visuals with a very unique technique and recitation of poetry by some legendary poets is the most touching.
Kharbanda is a London-born film-maker and storyteller based in New York. She has made a number of documentaries that chronicle the stories of women from Punjab, who, in the decades following the Partition, left for England in search of work and a new home. Moss is a photographer and cinematographer.
The installation is on display after 5.30 p.m. till November 21.
