How do you save a heritage property that is privately owned, with many claimants who rather make money from the prime real estate than save the heritage structure?
Baaraan Ijlal, a Delhi based visual artist embarked on an unusual journey in Kolkata along with Belgian photographer Alton Valadres, to find the lost memories and forgotten heritage of the vivacious city. Baaraan's public art project, 'Cities and Memories' is an attempt to revive the visual histories of cities across India and the narrative power that its inhabitants hold.
Baaraan's observations of old buildings in Kolkata have been beautifully expressed in her paintings where she narrates the stories of common people and their everyday life in the city. They may not have roots in a city but have accepted it as their own. Baaraan says that a city remembers all its inhabitants.
Cities and Memories is an art project to document visual histories of Cities. It looks at how cities remember its people. A privately owned heritage building surviving over a hundred years witnesses many 'owners' and their changing fortunes. It appears variously in the many stories of the people who come in contact: the migrant, the tenant, the child laborer, the vendor, the sex worker, the rickshaw puller, the writer, the filmmaker, the revolutionary, the passerby or the spy.She plans to travel to other cities in the country and document more such stories of our cities.
Cities are a dynamic process. They go through a continuous change. Sometimes we can lose the thread of continuity. It requires to be brought out and shown that here is the continuity. The artist says to accept what is new, if it does not emerge from the existing, it becomes very difficult to internalize and to adopt. So it becomes important to conserve. Conservation roots communities. It roots them in what they are, their own identity and the pride. The idea is to remember the stories of communities and individuals and preserve the fragile.