Exploring Representation Of Gender Through Museums At Bihar Museum Biennale In Bangalore

‘Museum is a place where one should lose one’s mind,’ Italian architect Renzo Piano once said. Sadly museums in India are not seen as exciting places, instead, we think of them as dark places. In the third of its events at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Bangalore, the first-panel comprising Nazneen Banu, Anjani Kumar Singh, Shreyasi Pathak, Basav Biradar, Karthik Kalyanaraman, and Tejshvi Jain discussed the role of museums in a digital world and how a museum can become a site for community engagement and negotiate better with changes that include shifting demographics and ever-escalating technologies. The several sessions were moderated by Chinki Sinha, Editor, of Outlook India.

The Bihar Museum Biennale at NGMA Bengaluru kickstarted with the NGMA Amrit Mahotsav anthem that has been composed by three-time Grammy award winner Rickey Kej: "𝐘𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐚𝐳 𝐛𝐡𝐢 𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐳 𝐛𝐡𝐢 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐯𝐚𝐚𝐳 𝐥𝐞 𝐫𝐚𝐡𝐢 𝐡𝐚𝐢, 𝐅𝐚𝐧𝐤𝐚𝐚𝐫 𝐤𝐢 𝐝𝐞𝐞𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐢 𝐚𝐤𝐚𝐫 𝐤𝐞 𝐫𝐚𝐡𝐢 𝐡𝐚𝐢"

Satish Padmanabhan, Managing Editor of The Outlook Magazine gave a warm welcome to all the artists and writers. “Museums like Bihar Museum are alive and active places. At Outlook, we have actively sought artists, writers, and singers to be part of our reporting and covers. So many artists have done covers for us, including Ravinder Reddy, who will be present, at a panel discussion today. These are political covers - climate change, gender violence, and caste atrocities. It is revealing how political art is. That is where we fit in.”

Anjani Kumar Singh, Director General of Bihar Museum said, “Bihar Museum’s great focus is on children. We are encouraging the ‘feel and touch’ experience. Children are usually told not to touch anything but we changed this. Children can tell you a lot, but the hierarchies need to be changed.”

Tejshvi Jain from ReReeti, an organisation that works towards revitalising museums and heritage sites recalls how her exhibition ‘The Undivided Identities’ was born.

‘The Undivided Identities: Unknown Stories of Partition’ project aims to uncover how, during the Partition, non-Muslims from Sindh in Pakistan migrated and settled down in different states of India, including Bengaluru. She emphasises the importance of localising and contextualising history. Reiterating that the exhibition was mainly for students, she says that children wanted to know about the partition and how it affected them, which is where the idea came from. The journey started with localising it and contextualising it to Bengaluru. How Bengaluru responded. It was a choice-based narrative - to put the viewer in the shoes of a partition survivor to see what they went through.

Calling Bihar a rockstar state, Arundhati Ghosh, cultural practitioner, and former executive director of India Foundation for the Art,  points to the politics of Bihar which always dissents from the narrative of the popular. Referring to Jainism and Buddhism in Bihar, she brings into the centre the poignancy of decentering power and representation. "Everybody will have a right to the museum if every 'body' wants to walk in and every 'body' feels the sense of belongingness." Differences to be looked at with wonder, curiosity and the intent to learn, she says.

The who’s who of the Indian art world and architecture world, museums, and academicians were in attendance today. Speaking about audience and viewers, panellists further deliberate on how museums can use technology to improve access to these spaces.

Karthik Kalyanaraman, an art curator says that it is not about diversity of representation, but diversity of the audience. "We don’t see auto drivers in the audience of museums’," he says.

Basav Biradar, writer and researcher reiterates similar views. “Most museums won’t allow you to check and see. How do we see when we don’t have the right to see? We have the technology to recreate that tactile feeling and allow us to see what we can’t. We also need to use technology to ensure diversity in the museums - it cannot only be successful people in the museums but ordinary people from the region,” he says.

The second panel comprising Mugdha Sinha, Tanishka Kachru, Arundhati Ghosh, Ravinder Reddy, and Suresh Jayaram, discussed Gender, Sexuality and Museums and focused on the inclusion of multiple perspectives around gender. 'How are women and queer community represented in a museum space in terms of display and collections and exhibits and how can it be improved?’ were the main questions panellists deliberated on. “My main aim is that my work should arouse the senses of the people,” says Ravinder Reddy, an artist. His work largely focuses on women’s heads, with wide-open eyes, which not many people are willing to show.

Meanwhile, chef Samta Gupta recreated the flavours of Bihar with her diverse team for the Bengaluru chapter of the Bihar Museum Biennale's third edition. Served traditionally in terracotta and copper utensils, she highlighted the shared cuisine trends of the Eastern and Southern states of India and shared what goes into the making of Bihar and Biharis.

The Bihar Museum Biennale, NGMA Bengaluru wrapped with an energetic performance by Lata Mangeshkar Swar Kokila Awardee, Neetu Singh Nutan. The singer moved her audience to sing and wave along the beats of her folk music from Bihar. With Chhath songs and Bidesiya, creation of Bihar's Shakespeare, Bhikhari Thakur, she paid her tribute to the struggles, and bitter-sweet quotidian of the millions of migrant workers of the state working across and outside the country.