Chinar Shah
Chinar Shah, an artist based in Bangalore, explores documentary practices, using the screen as a site of navigation. She founded Home Sweet Home Studio, a research and publication platform that investigates self-organized, artist-led, and curatorial projects in India. Her work examines alternative cultural productions that challenge institutional narratives.
She has received grants from the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation, Pronto – Göteborg Stad Kultur, AHRC (UK), ASAP: Art South Asia Project, and Experimenter, Calcutta. Her work has been presented at Tate Modern, Serendipity Arts Festival, and Kochi Biennale Collateral. She co-edited Photography in India: From Archives to Contemporary Practice (2018) and has taught at Srishti Institute of Art, Design, and Technology. Currently, she is a visiting faculty member at Vidyashilp University, Bangalore.
About Work
BrickWork is a result of interactions with brick workers in two villages in Tamil Nadu with radically different geographical conditions, over the course of 2021-2022. Brickwork in Tamil Nadu is entrenched in caste hierarchies, and most brick workers live in what is commonly known as ‘colonies’—a separate living arrangement for Dalit communities. The images attempt to portray caste-based debt relations, working conditions, access to basic necessities, and the emotional journeys of rural debt after the outbreak of Covid-19 and the resultant lockdowns. Centered around women’s experiences of debt and brickwork, these disembodied images bring together text and image to visualize the landscape of debt.
The work is part of the larger research project “Depleted by Debt? Focusing a Gendered Lens on Climate Resilience, Credit, and Nutrition in Translocal Cambodia and South India”, funded by the UKRI Global Challenges Research Fund.
shahchinar
chinar21@googlemail.com
com