: The ongoing Kochi-Muziris Biennale was instrumental in a family reunion of sorts for a Gujarati family that flourished in business in the city for over two centuries now.
An exhibition of photographs under the title, ‘ Ummijaan: Making Visible a World Within ’, a partnership project with KMB’14 that got under way at the Aasiya Bai Trust Hall in Mattancherry on Sunday, saw four generations of the prosperous Abad family get-together to catch a glimpse of their history.
The family, which runs major businesses in the hospitality sector and seafood export, found two decades of visual portrayal from the 1970s, following the creative eye of 20-year-old Nihaal Faizal, who curated the exhibition. Mr. Faizal is the great-grandson of 86-year-old Haleema Hashim, who took the 66 photographs in the show. Ms. Hashim is bedridden at her marital home in Chullikal, Fort Kochi, said a release.
Her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren along with their spouses found the inaugural function of ‘ Ummijaan’ as a special opportunity to refresh contacts and update memories about their household that has moorings in the Kutch region of the present-day Gujarat.
The Kochi Biennale Foundation termed the exhibition, which will be on till the current edition of the biennale lasts, as “an artful display of a fantastic archive”, and hailed the artistic spirit of Mr. Faizal for his choice of 66 photographs at the show.
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.
There was excitement as the family, belonging to the Kutchi Memon community, greeted one another in Creole-Kutchi, a mix of Kutchi, Urdu and Malayalam.
“We had the pictures for several decades without understanding the value of it,” said Tasneem Arif, Ms. Hashim’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.”
