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FOCUS Photography Festival
Mumbai
Email: info@focusfestivalmumbai.com
Ajit Bhadoriya (b. 1986, India) is a photography design graduate from the National Institute of Design (NID). His images are witness to his own and others’ negotiations within the complex systems of survival. He was awarded a Media Fellowship by the National Foundation for India in 2009-2010 for his work on migrant construction workers during Commonwealth games, Delhi. He has also received the Tierney Fellowship by the Tierney Foundation, New York for the year 2011-2012. He has been selected for many international workshops and presented his work at a number of festivals including Angkor Photo Festival, Chobi Mela and Photoville.
Fruit doesn’t taste the same here
Refugees: people of neither this world nor that world are constantly vulnerable to forces of fixed national, historical and cultural categories. Where does one belong as a refugee? Which nation, history, economy, land, and body do you belong to? It is a struggle against hegemonic power structures to survive as a refugee and negotiate your life.
For Afghan refugees in India, when basic survival is at question, how does one retain what was one’s own in a country that is not your own? How do refugees connect to the country that failed them or posed a threat to their lives? These crises have forced a new bond between refugees and the land. The history and culture of the new state influences the sensibilities of refugees. For the new Afghan generation in India, the idea of Afghanistan comes largely from popular media representation or stories told by elders. In such surreal situations, the only thing to hold onto is to call oneself Afghan or an Afghan refugee. However, these various histories and ideologies come into conflict with each other in performing one coherent identity.
On one hand, refugees struggle against all forces in the hope of surviving and to find a place that can be called home. Yet, being so away from home, one accepts and rejects systems of the new state in order to recreate something that belongs to them. This creation and recreation of new life as a refugee is a process of constant transition.