Can I
be grounded
if
the soil refuses to accept me
if
it repels me
and I hover
as non-belonger?
My current research focuses on the minority ethnic Goan diaspora in Pakistan and how the Portuguese colonization of Goa (India), the Partition of India and Pakistan, migration, and other factors have affected this community’s sense of identification and belonging. Additionally, I am interested in how erasures of small communities such as these from state/ colonial archives create a gap in history and what that means for the community in the present day.
My research begins with my family archive as a way of exploring the gap that exists within colonial history. I know that the possibility of fully recovering these erased histories is probably impossible but it is the erasure, the gap itself that I find most important. This void becomes a symbol of the trauma of colonial and imperial erasure and is, therefore, a significant space for me. It is in this space that I explore the processes of archiving and how its damaging effects affect ideas of home and belonging. I visualize my research through multimedia installations and essay-writing. This allows me to amalgamate research on institutional archives with my artistic explorations.
Among the two-percent population of Christian minorities in Pakistan is a dwindling community that refers to themselves as Goan Christians. The community emerged when Goans migrated to Karachi for job prospects especially since Portugal’s 450-year rule over Goa left the state destitute. During this colonial rule, many were made to accept Christianity, which probably happened to my family as well. Through her research, historian Margret Frenz found that Goans have been more liable to migrate than any other community, and can be found spread across the globe. One result of this is a lack of collective documentation or archived knowledge of the community.
Today, much information on Goan communities exists primarily through oral recollection, vernacular photography, or as side notes in prominent archives about the colonial conquest. Additionally, poor state relations between India and Pakistan hinder physical journeying to my grandmother’s family home in Goa. All these factors create an unusual and abstract situation that I have been visualizing as a space of not truly belonging anywhere. And wondering what a space of unbelonging may look like.
Find me
In the edges
Around, out
cast into
shadows
The void
