A Bell Rings Across The Valley by Footscray Community Arts Centre

A Bell Rings Across the Valley

We acknowledge that we work, live and create on the unceded sovereign lands of the Boon Wurrung and Woi Wurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation. We offer our respects to the Elders of these traditional lands and all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People.

The Bell Rings Across the Valley 12 April – 26 June Footscray Community Arts Artists: Ashfika Rahman (Bangladesh) Indu Antony (India) Sheelasha Rajbhandari (Nepal) Devika Bilimoria (Australia) Shwe Wutt Hmon (Myanmar) Curated by Shivanjani Lal. A Bell Rings Across the Valley is an official exhibition of PHOTO 2022 International Festival of Photography.

A bell rings out across the valley. A deep resonance that begins in the Himalayas and echoes out across the Bay of Bengal. Growing in vibration and meaning as it sings out. Complex and tender, a many headed figure forms. Both of alarm and joy. Photography’s roots here can be traced to empire, anthropology and journalism. The region takes these roots and shape shifts these understandings and new stories form. What does Contemporary Photography look like in South Asia? What stories are being told? Five artists have been invited from across South Asia and its Diaspora to speak of complex experiences of identity, heritage and change.

Image detail by Devika Bilmoria.

Executive Message Shivanjani Lal’s A Bell Rings Across the Valley is an exquisite and profound new exhibition that we are proud to house at Footscray Community Arts. As our second major gallery show for 2022, this photographic survey of South Asian and diaspora artists speaks to our local context which carries deep ties to a part of the world that is all too often homogenised by western culture – this exhibition gives a sense of the breadth of lived experiences and photographic practices that exist across South Asia and its resonances here in the western suburbs of Melbourne. PHOTO2022 is the perfect opportunity to present this exhibition – responding to the photography biennial’s theme of ‘Being Human’. At Footscray Community Arts, we believe all communities should have the opportunity to access culture and that creativity is fundamentally what makes us human. Through A Bell Rings Across the Valley, Shivanjani Lal and exhibiting artists convey photography’s power to remind of us of our shared humanity. Daniel Santangeli, Artistic Director and Co-CEO Robyn Gawenda, Executive Director and Co-CEO

Daniel Santangeli (Artistic Director and Co-CEO) and Robyn Gawenda (Executive Director and Co-CEO). Photography by Gianna Rizzo.

A Bell Rings Across the Valley (2022). Featuring works by Shwe Wutt Hmon and Sheelasha Rajbhandari. Image by Jody Haines.

Curatorial Essay A bell rings out across the valley. A deep resonance that begins in the Himalayas and echoes out across the Bay of Bengal, growing in vibration and meaning as it sings out. Complex and tender, a many-headed figure forms, both of alarm and joy. Photography's roots here can be traced to empire, anthropology and journalism. The region takes these roots and shape-shifts these understandings and new stories form. What does Contemporary Photography look like in South Asia? What stories are being told? Five artists have been invited from across South Asia and its diaspora to speak of complex experiences of identity, heritage and change. A bell rings across the valley The opening images of the exhibition takes us to Bangalore where we are greeted by Indu Antony’s work Cecilia’ed. Cecilia greets audiences with wide open arms. A single figure in public space co-opts and disrupts gendered spaces and allows through her presence unsafe spaces to become safe. This work is a reminder that to be safe in public is not always a given but a privilege. The sound echoes upwards to Kathmandu The next work we encounter is Sheelasha Rajbhandari’s I Still See That Same Old House of Ours In My Dreams, silk screened images of the artists family are printed and stitched onto shawls archiving the familial in the familiar. These shawls are local to the Kathmandu Valley and using these to hold images of her family is a tangible reminder that we garner both a sense of warmth from our loved ones but also a sense of place making. An echo rings onwards into Bangladesh Where we encounter Ashfika Rahman’s ongoing body of work The Files of The Disappeared. In Bangladesh’s recent history nearly 4000 young people have been disappeared by the police. Portraits of people situated within the safe space of their homes intimately; hidden and occasionally stitched over with gold thread. Juxtaposed with large haunting landscapes, reflecting on this complex contemporary history of Bangladesh. Rahman’s work offers those who have been returned the opportunity to have a voice.

The sound moves across the Bay of Bengal In these complex times Only Clouds Know by Shwe Wutt Hmon from Myanmar delves into the world of Mental Health. Hmon’s project begins with her sister’s diagnosis with Schizophrenia, however this work explores her own need and realisation that she too needs mental health support to take care of herself. Sharing conversations, documents and interior images of her home. Hmon’s work offers intimate insight into the challenges of seeking the right help in the complex times. Sounding across the waves moving from motherland into diasporic sentiment A single person faces the audience and walks backwards into the water. Untitled 02 by Devika Bilimoria is a single channel video work that refracts as you continue to watch it. The diasporic feeling when witnessing this work reminds of the Pacific notion of walking backwards into the future. Bilimoria’s work is part somatic meditation and part refraction; each body slips into each other into the water and generates new possibilities. Remade and unmade gestures engaging with nature and remaking possibilities of the diapsoric body. A bell rings A Bell Rings Across the Valley sheds light on the complex experiences of South Asian identity. Works navigate public and private space, mental and physical understandings of place making and how contemporary artists from the region unpack and reframe these experiences with viewpoints that offer shared understandings while dismantling preconceived gendered and colonial perspectives. A sense of hope pervades even these strange times. Shivanjani Lal

Ashfika Rahman Ashfika Rahman lives and works in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Her practice straddles art and documentary, drawing inspiration from 19th century prints which she recontextualizes using contemporary media. Photography is the predominant medium through which she expresses her views on complex systemic social issues. She found her voice in photography when she discovered her social activist mother trying to follow her faith in social work. She began to work with marginal people in Bangladesh, especially about the violence on minority, tribal or ethnic groups in remote hills or a village in peripheries of Bangladesh. In each of her work she try to challenge the mainstream perspective towards these issues.

Files of the Disappeared, (detail) 2018-ongoing, Ashfika Rahman.

Devika Bilimoria Devika Bilimoria is a multi-disciplinary artist and photographer. Their practice expands on notions of queering, materiality, and time to disrupt and examine the construction of gestures, bodies and cultural experiences, with an emphasis on diasporic South-Asian dance and ritual. Having trained in the Indian dance form of Bharatanatyam, as well as Fine Arts and Media Studies at RMIT, their art forms span performance, moving/still image and installation — harnessing participatory processes, improvisation, experimentation and embodied listening to explore sensations of time. They have shown work at the National Portrait Gallery, the Monash Gallery of Art, Montsalvat Gallery and Dancehouse.

Untitled 02, (still) 2022, Devika Bilimoria.

Indu Antony Indu Antony is a transdisciplinary artist based out of Bangalore and Kerala, India. She is known to explore tonalities of inward discussions which later on bursts out into communal spaces. Her work primarily revolves around the notion of spaces and their intangible character in relation to the gendered body as a site of representation by understanding feministic stands which gives way to performances and installations. Her recent works use a lot of her hair as a metaphor for memory. She recently started her own self publishing initiative called Mazhi Books under which she has published her first book Why can’t bras have buttons? - which was the runner up for the Alkazi Foundation Photo Book Grant and profiled on Fast Forward, a platform showcasing the best of women photography. Her second book Directory of the outsiders won the Experimental Co-operative Art Grant. Indu Antony has participated in several group exhibitions including the Chennai Photo Biennale (2019); Serendipity Arts Festival (2018); Kochi-Muziris Biennale (Collateral, 201819); Foto Fest Biennale (Houston, 2018); Queer Asia Photo Exhibition (London, 2017) and Photo Kathmandu (Nepal, 2015). Her project Cecilia’ed received the Public Art Grant by FICA in 2019. She won the Toto funds Award for photography in 2011.

Cecilia'ed, (detail) 2019 - ongoing, Indu Antony.

Sheelasha Rajbhandari Sheelasha Rajbhandari is a visual artist, cultural organizer, and co-founder of the artist collective Artree Nepal (founded in 2013) based in Kathmandu. She is interested in exploring alternative and plural narratives through folktales, folklore, oral histories, mythologies, material culture, performance, and rituals and placing them as evidence, along with references to mainstream history and narratives. Her long-term research projects and artistic practice often juxtapose these contradictions and synthesize the knowledge and experiences that result from individual and collective discourses. Through her work, she frequently tries to encounter simple yet socially taboo subject matters, with a focus on women’s struggles, celebrating their resilience. Her recent works explore the current transformation of Nepal, from a once important centre for trans-Himalayan trade to a geopolitical situation in flux between the two emerging world powers of India and China. Rajbhandari is very careful about choosing materials and methods that align with her conceptual framework. She prefers mediums and materials that add meaning to ideas and have their own significance.

I Still See That Same Old House of Ours In My Dreams, (detail) 2020, Sheelasha Rajbhandari.

Shwe Wutt Hmon Shwe Wutt Hmon is a freelance documentary photographer based in Yangon, Myanmar, and also works as an independent researcher for UN agencies and international organisations. Shwe’s works focus on feminism, collective identity, human relationships, exploring mental health and telling intimate stories of places and people that are close to her heart. She tells personal stories from which she connects and examines larger social issues; vice versa she works on social stories reflecting and drawing from her position within the issue. Shwe uses photography as her main medium, and incorporates videos, texts, poems, paintings and drawings of her own or collaborating with others.

Only Clouds Know, (detail) 2022, Shwe Wutt Hmon.

About the Curator

Shivanjani Lal is a Fijian-Australian artist and curator. Her work explores personal grief to account for ancestral loss. Exploring narratives of indenture and migratory histories from the Indian and Pacific oceans, works uses storytelling, objects and video to account for lost histories and cede futures for healing. She is the recipient of the 2019 Create New South Wales Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship, was a 2020 Studio artist at Parramatta Artists Studios and the 2020 Georges Mora Fellow. Lal’s artistic work and curated shows have appeared in Australia, New Zealand, India, United Kingdom, Barbados and France.

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