GAURI GILL
Acts of Appearance
June, 2023
Guari Gill
During one of her many journeys through rural India, Guari Gill witnessed the annual Bohada festival, which takes place in several Adivasi (Indigenous) villages in the state of Maharashtra in Western India. The festival lasts for several days and nights and the entire community participates, with selected villagers donning sacred and elaborate papier-mâché masks that represent gods, demons, and other mythical creatures. Gill was struck by how distant this fantastical world seemed from the ordinary lives and everyday challenges faced by the villagers, whose livelihood is under constant threat due to drought, malnutrition, land confiscation, and global warming:
The masks were spectacular, but I began to wonder why they had to be so idealized. Why were there no masks depicting grey hair, large noses, or spectacles? Why couldn’t routine activities like sweeping the floor also be represented, as opposed to dramatizations of demon-slaying?
Gill decided to invite two renowned local papier-mâché artists, Subhas and Bhagvan Dharma Kadu, both members of the Kokna and Warli communities, to work with her on a creative collaboration. Drawing from the traditional mask-making arts practiced for generations, Gill proposed that they, along with family members and residents from their village, would create a new repertoire of masks depicting their own or familiar lives, inspired by living humans, animals, and cherished objects:
I envisioned the freedom these masks could offer as a way to distance and reflect upon oneself, as a means to explore one’s own life and circumstances here and now, rather than a distant past.
Working with Gill the villagers then staged themselves as they wished in front of Gill’s camera, wearing their new masks. A deer reading the newspaper, a rat diligently tending to hospital care, cockroaches immersed in cooking, and various human characters occupied with everyday routines became self-portraits, expressing the dreams, fears, truths, and absurdities of individual lives. During the photo shoots, crowds of curious onlookers would gather, eager to contribute suggestions for improvisation:
People came to drink tea in the background, joke around, and cheer, then everyone would pull themselves together for the next shoot. You cannot see any traces of this in the photographs, as they also remain small fictions of what truly happened—much like masks.
Guari Gill