-Brian Mendonca
When I furtively entered Gallery I of the Museum of Goa (MOG), Pilerne I stepped into the past, as it were. The dark, semi-lit setting accentuated this journey into the recesses of memory.
Looking at the sewing machine occupying pride of place in the installation, I remembered my mother. She used to spend hours on her Singer machine, the needles thrumming in unison, the sound ricocheting across the walls of our childhood years. She also did embroidery work, crotchet, and knitted sweaters for us - all of which are in a trunk or wardrobe somewhere in the old house. In that activity she was complete, whole and self-purposed.
'Carmona's Talking Quilt' by
Savia Viegas gave that memory back to me. Her exhibition across various media offered a unique idiom to artistically preserve the past. Based in the village of Carmona in South Goa, Savia's intricate embroideries on denim narrate secrets of the past in a cornucopia of visual images. The texture of the exhibits almost invites you to reach out and feel the threading which animates the lines - except that it is framed in glass.
So we learn about Lovely the dog and its fate; the cow which munched the grass outside the house; the tiger at the door; the girl with the small breasts; the fate of the orphan Maria; and the man who came and went in the sisters' bedroom. This is life in a village as it happens, and Savia does not flinch to tell it.
In addition to the grand panoply of embroidered narratives there are sets of paintings - one of them titled 'Song Sung Blue' - which strike the eye with their bright colours and vivid visualization. Each of these pictures needs an annotation of its own. The entire exhibition needs to see itself in a book to memorialize our intangible heritage. A set of postcards of the paintings could also be considered.
At the far end is an ingenious mural of AI-enabled images which are a pastiche of photos and images from the past. Photographs of people are layered onto old houses, now ravaged with time, re-imbuing them with the essence of the past. When I see old Goan houses in Porvorim being bought and repurposed - one into a showroom for bikes near O Coqueiro, another in a quiet lane leading to CHOGM road - I feel a slice of the past is lost to us forever. The AI displays breathed new life into old homes, even if they only served as an epitaph.
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| Savia Viegas at work. |
As I traversed the art space, I got a sense of magic realism so evident in Latin American literature. In its motifs, symbols, and yearnings Carmona could be Marquez's Macondo. What is so arresting is the way each painting/ embroidery has been partitioned creatively into several segments, each element knitting the narrative together. Even then, the arrangements are spacious, not cluttered, in a space of around 30 x 31.5 cms.
Stitching pieces of cloth together is like bringing coherence to one's life. There are several patchwork quilt traditions in India which attest to the same.
Bookworm Trust in Goa brought out
My Godri Anthology (2013) by Merle Almeida, illustrated by Nina Sabnani.
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All work displayed is by Savia Viegas. Photos by Brian Mendonca taken at Museum of Goa, Pilerne, Goa on Sunday, 12 May 2024. Photo of Savia, courtesy Savia Viegas. Updated 14/5/24.
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