Gauri Gill (b. 1970 Chandigarh, India) is a Delhi based photographer. She has exhibited within India and internationally including at the 58th Venice Biennale; MoMA PS1, New York; Documenta 14, Athens and Kassel; Kochi Biennale 2016, 7th Moscow Biennale and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. Her work is in the collections of prominent institutions worldwide, and in 2011 she was awarded the Grange Prize, Canada’s foremost award for photography. Various ongoing projects highlight her sustained belief in collaboration and ‘active listening’, and in using photography as a memory practice. Gill’s work addresses the Indian identity markers of caste, class and community as determinants of mobility and social behaviour; in it there is empathy, surprise, and a human concern over issues of survival.
Acts of Appearance assumed its form within a village of Adivasi papier mâché artists from the Kokna and Warli tribes in Jawhar district, Maharashtra. In 2015, the photographer Gauri Gill sought out the acclaimed papier mâché practitioners, the brothers Subhas and Bhagvan Dharma Kadu, sons of the legendary craftsman Dharma Kadu, with a proposal. She wished to commission them, along with their families and fellow volunteers (more than thirty people in total), to create a set of masks – not of gods or demons as per local tradition and lore and as seen in the local Bohada festival masks, but representing beings existing in contemporary reality. The interpretive creations were to come from them, with the suggestion that they embody different ages, distinctive individuals, the varied rasas such as love, sadness, fear or anger, and those experiences common to all humans, such as sickness, relationships, or aging. In the course of the dialogue, animals were naturally understood to be a part of this universe. Later, precious objects entered the frame, as they are believed to have sentience too. Inhabiting these masks, a cast of ‘actor’ volunteers (including the artists) would go on to improvise and enact different ‘real’ scenarios, ‘across dreaming and waking states’, in and around the village.
Acts of Appearance was created with the participation of Bhagvan Dharma Kadu, Subhas Dharma Kadu, Yuvraj Bhagvan Kadu, Rahul Arvind Kakad, Madhuri Subhas Kadu, Vaibhav Subhas Kadu, Rahul Bhagvan Kadu, Makhaval Bhagvan Kadu, Mukta Subhas Kadu, Rangeeta Arvind Kakad, Sampat Raho Vazare, Gangubai Eshwar Vazare, Rajashri Eshwar Vazare, Darshana Devram Kakad, Ganesh Ganpat Lokhande, Sangeeta Ganesh Lokhande, Sangeeta Navnath Kadu, Kusum Bhagvan Kadu, Harishchandra Rama Kadu, Suvrna Harishchandra Vad, Anjana Sachin Kurbude, Sachin Sankar Kurbude, Sanjay Sakharam Vatas, Ganpat Ganga Lokhande, Rupesh Arvind Kakad, Nalini Pradip Valvi, Jyoti Sanjay Vatas, Shravan Budhya Tumbda, Saraswati Subhas Kadu, Sapna Bhagvan Kadu, Bhawna Bhagvan Kadu, Pooja Arvind Kakad, Tushar Prakash Vatas, Tushar Dinkar Vatas, Vijaya Navnath Kadu, Suraj Tukaram Vad, Nishant Tulshiram Thalkar and Nilam Sunil Marad.