Sahil Ravindra Naik | Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2022-23

A thing isn’t beautiful because it lasts. Loss however is a strange thing - it fills the hollows of the heart. On the instant, it deprives us of the warmth of memories, like heavy fog that envelopes blades of grass, growing; swaying as time does in love, companionship, friendship - nourished. To heal, we need more than time - we need to teach ourselves to carry the inheritance of hope, from those that have left us and those we had to leave. This hope, has like the wind, carries the people of Curdi, a small village in Southern Goa, to their erstwhile home each year - a home they were physically displaced from four decades ago.
The work in Sahil Ravindra Naik’s All is Water and to Water we Must Return emerges from his seven year-long engagement with the people of Curdi. It began with a forensic and spatial study of the landscape and architecture, the deterioration of which has accelerated this decade. The same waters and slush that acted as natural cushions and preserved the structures, are now warmer than ever along with erratic rainfall patterns and outburst floods. Few people who knew Curdi and its ways of life personally are alive today and at a very advanced age. Their stories were never documented. Naik set out to interview them over many months, employing their stories to map the village and its architecture and write its history from the perspective of its people.
Thank you Experimenter for supporting the artwork.
Research supported by Warehouse 421, Abu Dhabi, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, HH Art Spaces and Five Million Incidents, 2019-2020, conceived by Goethe-Institut in collaboration with Studio Raqs, Serendipity Arts Foundation and Ravi Agarwal.
This Foundation Project is implemented by India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) under the Arts Practice programme, made possible with support from Sony Pictures Entertainment Fund.
Helicam - kalpit gaonkar
Video Lab Support: Kiran Nadar Museum of Art