Walking into Darkness, from Sisters of the Moon, 2021. Courtesy the artist.

The above verses stayed with me for weeks after I visited Poulomi Basu’s latest project Fireflies on show at Autograph (2022). The artist’s personal journey is one of defiance, resistance, growth, and healing – should the ghosts of the past ever completely disappear. Fireflies functions as a visual ode to the long and winding road that the artist has taken to confront and assert the one true self.

Basu uses the imaginary power of magic realism – a narrative strategy that inserts mythical elements into an apparent realistic fiction – and science-fiction to foreground her own story, her mother’s story, and the story of other women who have opened themselves up to the artist. Deeply personal and emotive, Fireflies means a radical turning point in the Bengali artist’s career, aesthetically and conceptually where she turns the camera upon herself to reflect on her own experiences of trauma and rebirth; ‘vulnerability is often seen as a weakness, but to me it’s quite the opposite; it’s always been my strength. By being vulnerable and showing it, is how I have learned to conquer shame and embrace the fact that I’m not alone.’1

Fireflies, installation view at Autograph ABP, Rivington Place, London. Courtesy the artist.

Born in Calcutta, in the bosom of a male-dominated and abusive household, Basu soon understood the situation of inferiority to which women in her surroundings were left. Encouraged by her mother and grandmother who had been child brides, Basu left for Bombay at the age of 17 and later migrated to the UK. ‘I remember how you told me that tradition would trap me if I did not leave. So, I ran, and kept on running.’2 And the journey to her resurrection began.

Fireflies symbolises the closure of a full circle whereby Basu’s practice has taken her back to her origins; the artist incorporates cinematic influences she was exposed to from an early age into her newer works. Informed by the Parallel Cinema movement in India, and highly influenced by the master Satyajit Ray, Basu, alongside filmmaker CJ Clarke, created two video works as part of the project. In one of them a lone faceless figure dressed in a grey bodysuit dances to no music in a spatial void; in the other one, a feminine voice off interlaces a present story of space exploration with the memories of her personal one. Having always given visibility to other women’s stories, Basu now narrates her personal life-story where the artist faces her past and starts making peace with it.

The artist combines carefully crafted portraits of herself and her mother where their bodies embrace, with images of lone figures against the vast and sublime backdrop of beautiful natural landscapes. Formalistically the artist expands beyond the frame of the photograph and experiments with different supports and display formats. Images of glaciers are printed on translucent fabrics that form an immersive installation in the middle of the space. On one hand, the fabrics that resemble veils function as portals through which you can experience the framed works on the walls; on the other, they add to the enigmatic yet solemn atmosphere within a gallery that honours all the women who have supported Poulomi along her journey: ‘I owe it to the women who have opened themselves up to me. I want them to know that we are fighting this oppression together. We are doing this with collective agency. Our voice of resistance.’3

The Burden of Carrying Water, from Sisters of the Moon

Basu’s practice has revolved around advocating for women and girls, greatly influenced by the injustices she witnessed when volunteering at women’s care homes during her teenage years. Many women in India are considered disposable and dumped by their families, so, following a story-telling style, the artist decided to employ the power of photography to enable spaces for empowerment of other women where they can safely share their stories, and where the violent Western gaze’s strategies of objectification are rendered obsolete.

In To Conquer Her Land, Basu’s first long-term project, the artist wove landscapes and b&w portraits to tell the story of an extraordinary cohort of Indian women who were recruited and deployed to patrol the India-Pakistan border created after the partition in 1947. The project leads us through the process of women becoming soldiers and trying to redefine their identity: ‘To Conquer Her Land wrestles with intricate issues of conflict, psychological warfare, class, youth, gender and queerness, love, peace, the concept of home, an undefined idea of patriotism, and the strength of the mind’4 she comments.

An activist at heart, for Basu the work does not end when it is exhibited in a conventional white cube, rather she seeks tangible impact. Her second large body of work Blood Speaks: A Ritual of Exile, a project about the Nepalese-Hindu practice of chhaupadi whereby girls and women are confined to mud huts during their menstruation cycle, managed to get the Nepalese government to pass a law in 2018 that punishes people who force women into exile during their periods. That same year, the spectacular portraits and photographs of landscapes taken by the artist during her research were exhibited alongside three VR pieces as part of the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival. Women and girls who collaborated with the artist had the opportunity to share their stories more broadly.

Basu’s third and, possibly, largest body of work, Centralia, formed by a book and the film Ghost Dance, takes the form of Indian docu-fiction. It attempts to shed light over the underreported yet on-going conflict for land and resources in Central India between the indigenous tribes, rebel soldiers, and the governmental forces. Seemingly straightforward, the artist masterfully starts introducing fiction strategies to expose how our perceptions of reality and truth are manipulated, such as the title that refers, in a Kafkaesque way, to a town in Pennsylvania, US, where fire burned the town down and today it is a dead zone. ‘I have become interested in how magical realism intersects with surrealism and creates this middle space. Centralia is really the start of it. In the book I take the reader through all these apocalyptic landscapes, but they don’t really know where or when the story is placed.’5 The film, produced in collaboration with CJ Clarke and premiered at The Photographers Gallery in 2020 when Basu was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Prize, removes the specificity of a dystopian location to predict a global post-apocalyptic scenario as narrated by a female voice-over; it functions as a warning of where the world could end, unless there is a radical turn of events.

The interlacing of women’s portraits and landscape photographs is present in all of Basu’s projects. The Indian artist continuously refers to the spiritual and magical connection that there is between women’s bodies and nature, not only are both creationists: ‘women have an inherent role in nature, in creating the habitat’6, but also, in situations where the notions of conquest and misogyny collide, women’s bodies become contested territories that help men consolidate control over what they forcedly take as their property.

Sisters of the Moon, Basu’s most recent and still work-in-progress project, is an eco-feminist tale that examines women’s access to education and elemental rights, and how the lack of them decimates the potential of women and girls in the global South. Set against a dystopian magical landscape on the frontline of climate change, in this work the artist uses her own body as an activist vehicle to dismantle social and environmental injustice. The arresting self-portraits not only represent the many different realities women and girls face, but also shine a light of hope and empowerment where the artist recreates ‘the future of the planet tied to the full realisation of women’s elemental rights to water and the earth’.7

Ultimately, Poulomi Basu uses the power of images to draw attention to the interconnectedness of patriarchy, water crisis, and environmental justice. She creates space for under-reported stories and is interested in highlighting those of women and girls in the majority world because ‘without their magic, their spark, the world withers and dies.’8