Dattaraj and Dipti Salgaocar present, under the curatorial direction of Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi, one of Sunaparanta’s most ambitious and daring shows: Bharat Sikka’s Where The Flowers Still Grow. A result of years of travels to Kashmir, and a response to Mirza Waheed’s elegiac novel The Collaborator, Sikka’s important and exquisite photographs accomplish what tremendous acts of political literature and sensibility must set out to do: they record the rage of betrayal, a disappointment in political systems, and disturbing echoes of loss experienced only in private. Without ever trivializing the pathos of the young Kashmiri men he documents, and without appropriating their disquiet and anger, Sikka distinguishes this body of work – as he has his oeuvre – with a visual vocabulary that enjoys no comparison in India. His cunning relationship with colour, and his great pleasure in light, is in potent evidence in Where the Flowers Still Grow, establishing him as a visual artist who is prepared to take powerful risks, and exercise compassion without sentimental manipulation.
