Project Home: The Word for the World is Home is a collateral yet composite, fluid extension that grew organically out of an on-going autobiographical book transcription of Seema Kohli’s father Krishnan Dev Kohli. The book- Mitar Pyaare Noo - is an ode to the memory of Dev Kohli’s hometown Pind Dadan Khan (my ancestral homeland) Jhelum district in Punjab pre-partition, and the medicinal knowledge thoroughly preserved and practised in our family-tree throughout generations. Today, Pind Dadan Khan, a town that once bustled with life and activity along the riverbanks of Jhelum in Punjab, stands as a place of unresolved history, terror and border conflict.
The complete project was recently showcased at Kolkata Creativity Center including a live performance, titled as ‘Retracing Paradise: The Word for the World is Home, by artist Seema Kohli in collaboration with a group of movement artists where she recites passages from her father’s ongoing autobiography with visual projections of selected images taken from her family’s photo-archives.
Extracted Page View. Mitar Pyare Noo I an extract from an ongoing autobiography - Krishan Dev Kohli I author with his wife, Uma Kohli I 1958-59
“Memories are seamless and borderless. The native in you and me resides in the homeland of memories that cannot be partitioned. Memories cannot be patrolled at the borders.” -Krishnan Dev Kohli, ‘Mitar Pyaare Noo’ (ongoing autobiography)
Project Home is an attempt by Kohli at re-presenting and telling her family’s story through the de-cluttered lens of a curated assemblage of her family’s history of their involuntary displacement as one of the many in the undivided Punjab. For Kohli, such an intimate narratives offers the opportunity to act as mnemonic for the audience of their own experiences and stories, and unlock possibilties for a real human connection unbound by judgement or intellect.
Here, Kohli creates an interactive performance cum exhibition space where she discards its contemporary current self, and transforms it into an immersive world of her acquired family’s memorabilia and her artworks in response. She attempts at orchestrating a live yet historical, and tactile yet ephemeral experience of displacement and nostalgia by juxtaposing elements such as live performance, body movement, installed artworks alongside objects of inheritance and others reproduced/sourced to solidify the translation from memory into a tangible form. Hence, it is an attempt at reversing time in space at an experiential level.
Front - Left to right: author’s elder brother, K B Kohli, Damyanti Kohli, Keval Kohli. Back - Right to left: Sunil Kohli, Lalita Ghai, Bharti Dhalwala I Punjab I 1962
In hindsight, this also touches upon what belongingness and ownership really mean. By stripping the site of its current value and transforming it into a narrative world of ancestral history and Kohli herself as the first generation descendent, post-Partition, living in India, the artist hopes to dissolve all types of barriers between the observer and the observed. By doing so, the artist aspires to dismantle and share peoples’ inert diaspora of memories of their own particular histories and origins.
Work in Progress. Project Home: The Word for the World is Home I Re-drawing/painting of herb/plant references on brass utensils I acrylic, ink & brass I 2018
I touch you Pitaji in the moth ridden books stitched with your own hands
In the aged smell of the fragmented words
of the languages you spoke, you wrote.
I hear the words evaporating in the stories of disintegrating faded photos
Trying to pull out a few spoken words,
I snatch a few voices, try to grab them by their form.
Drawing from them meanings of inheritance,
Hugging the warmth of yesteryears.
-Seema Kohli
2019
Few installation and performance views from the exhibition at Kolkata Creativity Center can be found below:
Installation View. Project Home: The Word for the World is Home I variable dimensions I cabinet, jar, sourced medicinal herbs, bottles I 2019
‘I belong to a family tree of hakims that had transcended their ancestral knowledge of healing and medicinal herbs over 18 generations besides inherited land. However, the comprehensively preserved string of medicinal knowledge remains fragmented, vestigial, familiar yet unfamiliar in my present life today.’ Seema Kohli
Installation View. Project Home: The Word for the World is Home I re-drawing/painting of herb/plant references on brass utensils I acrylic, ink & brass I Kolkata Creativity Center I 2019
‘Painting the stories of herbs, objects, and fragrances brings me close to the 18 generations-old knowledge of Unani Hikmat and Ayurveda in my family. I painted these images onto brass utensils which Pind Dadan Khan was famous for. Hakim Chunn Lal Kohli, my Pitaji (grandfather) made it a point to involve the children in the process of treatment of his patients whether it was grinding of the herbs or washing and cleaning of patients' wounds or feeding them, or even cooking for them.’ Seema Kohli
Installation View. Project Home: The Word for the World is Home I reproduced anatomical drawings with text I calligraphy I ink, pencil & archival paper I Kolkata Creativity Center I 2019
(Below) Detail View. Project Home: The Word for the World is Home I locally-sourced medicinal herbs I variable dimensions I 2019
‘Pind Dadan Khan, situated at the base of the Himalayan Range, was rich in medicinal herbs and plants making it possible for the hakims throughout the family lineage to continue their practice of composing herbal remedies for treatment. While travelling on camelbacks to a pilgrimage of Katasraj, they used to pass through vast expanses of Gulab ke khet (rose fields). Gulkhand was the most common sweet or accompaniment to basi roti (stale bread). I tried to gather whatever herbs I could from Khari Bauli - the herbs and spices market in Delhi where I live as part of the exhibition. While growing up, I was also lovingly fed with these herbs. This is the closest I could get to my memories.’ Seema Kohli
Installation View. Project Home: The Word for the World is Home I a narrative arrangement of framed family photographs with artist’s notes on the wall I variable dimensions I 2019
‘I have always been curious about my ancestral history and these small anecdotes that could only be known by word of mouth at home or in one’s neighbourhood. As I started to work at developing tangible, actual works on project Home, I became even more interested in understanding the relationships between people and their homelands, and how it has shifted from the past of joint families to nuclear to the present wherein we lay so much emphasis on living as an individual and on the idea of ‘I’. In many ways, all my past projects including project Home are connected with the same thematic bloodline of innate, universal suffering, and the journey of every living being towards a nirvanic state, free of all attachments or desires whether it is Hirangarbha, Tree of Life, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam or Tat Tvam Asi, In Secret The Silence Speaks, Ouroborus, or even Ganga for that matter.’ Seema Kohli
Live-Performance View. Project Home: The Word for the World is Home I performance & installation I 40 mins I variable dimensions I mixed media I Kolkata Creativity Center I 2019
‘The musical instruments which I have employed for The Word for the World is Home performance and the rope made of muslin cloth-pieces echo of the same principle of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. We are all walking our own paths of life. We all carry the load of our own worldly existences. When every separate instrument is played together, their sounds intertwine, overlap, and dip and rise, sometimes fade or rest for another note to enter and prevail to become the ultimate musical composition of perfect harmony. Just like those instruments, we create the joy of togetherness, unconditional love and compassion when we really unite.’ Seema Kohli.
Detail View. The Word for the World is Home I 54” x 61” I mixed-media I 2017