Page Text: Online exhibition Mridu Rai: How Do I Bring You Home?
“This project is an expression of my intellectual and emotional vulnerabilities that emerged whilst trying to engage with a colonial photo archive. The L.A Waddell Collection (1890 c.) now housed at the Royal Anthropological Institute, London, has 60 photographs of 30 men and women representing “types of natives” of Nepal, Tibet and Sikkim. The commission was carried out by Johnston and Hoffman studio, Calcutta and the portraits are similar to the photographs prescribed by the anthropological concerns of the time. Engaging with the archive was anything but easy, the process demanding intense personal responses while searching for new ways of looking at colonial visual archives. The series juxtaposes images from the L.A Waddell collection with other photographs, from my personal albums, my photo collective’s family photo archive as well as contemporary images. These are accompanied by textual narratives in the form of letters, emerging almost as a stream of consciousness. In the way the images are laid out and the letters are written, there was no blueprint, but they started emerging on their own as I “saw” each portrait—perhaps, my ancestors’ and my own lived experiences guiding me throughout. At times, the medium of exhibition does feel inappropriate. But the spirits and stories of the people in the portraits asked to come out now and in this way. I hope I have honoured them and continue to do so.”