Acts of Appearance
Redefining tradition through creation and photography, Acts of Appearance is a collaborative project initiated and directed by Gauri Gill. In Maharashtra, Gill meets artists from a village renowned for its mask-making. These papier-mâché faces are created for the Bohada festival of the Adivasi communities, or Indigenous peoples, who enact mythological tales for the yearly event. Intrigued by the disparity between this fantastical universe and the lived precariousness of the population, in 2015 the artist commissioned the creation of new pieces from the famous mask-makers Subhas and Bhagvan Dharma Kadu, their relatives and volunteers. These masks show human beings, animals or universal experiences. Gill photographs villagers improvising scenarios from their daily lives, to create fictional stories rooted in contemporary Indian reality.
