Kalapani: The Jahajis’ Middle Passage

Indo-Caribbean artist Andrew Ananda Voogel is a descendant of the Jahajis of Guyana, a community whose ancestors were Indian indentured workers brought to the Caribbean as plantation labourers in the early 19th century. After the gradual abolition of African slave trade, the search for cheap labour had spread to India, from where many men and women, including Voogel’s ancestors, were separated from their families and forcibly herded into ships leaving for Guyana and other colonies. Unable to return, these workers eventually forged hybrid communities in their new homes. Memories of their violent departure and exile form an important part of Voogel’s work.

Kalapani: The Jahajis’ Middle Passage (2014) is an installation that further excavates these stories of displacement and detention. ‘Kalapani’ (literally ‘Black water’), here, is a reference to a traditional Hindu taboo on crossing the seas. The installation consists of a video displayed alongside the passage papers that record the arrival of the artist’s great grandparents, Sita and Bhoja, to Guyana as indentured labourers.

Passive witnesses to events of great personal rupture, these archival sources act as entry points to Voogel’s video–an abstract, dream-like vision of waves crashing on a coastline. Rendered soft and indistinct, the projected image slowly reveals itself once the viewers’ eyes adjust to the darkness around. The undulating movement of waves combines with the stillness and silence of the gallery space to create an intensely meditative, almost therapeutic atmosphere: A space to piece together fragmented memories of our own past as also a site to revisit the trauma of those who suddenly found themselves stranded on alien shores.