This collection of seventy-six hand-embroidered works by artist and historian Varunika Saraf is a visual history of India from 1946 to 2022. Seventy-five works consist of human figures inspired by photographs—men, women, children, citizens, politicians, protestors, soldiers, policemen, riot victims, refugees, displaced persons, workers, peasants, artisans, fisherfolk—embroidered inside a blood-red tie-and-dye map of India rendered on un-dyed, unbleached khadi cloth. Some works depict large-scale happenings that will be intelligible to historians as ‘events’, such as the elections of 1952–53 or the inauguration of a dam. Others depict small acts of kindness or defiance whose wider impact can only be intuited rather than demonstrated, such as a young girl swimming in flood waters to save her lamb or a group of schoolchildren seeing fit to burn their schoolbooks in protest of the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act.
Each is marked as a moment of significance, as a turning point in the history of independent India. One map is left blank, inviting us to inscribe stories other than those that Varunika was moved by and able to tell, for there can be no single authoritative history. This collection is more than just a chronicle. It is a living history, one that seeks the ‘keys’ of our present predicament in the past, without giving the past the power to determine our future. It poses a critical question: How, from its audaciously hopeful beginnings as a nation-state committed to democracy, secularism, and the dignity and material well-being of all its citizens, has India come to be ruled by a neo-fascist regime that has reneged on these commitments in all but name? In her search for answers, Varunika employs a mode of political critique that acknowledges the weight of historical inheritances and the possibility, not often realised but always present, of transcending them. She undertakes a careful reckoning with what was, what is, what ought to be and what can be.
– Excerpt from a longer text by Vanessa Chishti for the catalog: We, The People.
