M(Othering) (2022)
This moving image piece is an embodiment of a performative practice attempting to ideate through movement and the signs- symbols that form their own language without the syntax of normative narratives. The medium used to embody the devastation of care, loss and identity, is the life-story of the Asian Cuckoo bird or the Koel/Koyal and the Crow – both as mothers/ carers – lamenting their fates in different ways.
The female Asian koel (koyal) bird is one that doesn’t make her own nest for her eggs/ children to grow up in, because she is never taught how to in the first place. Instead, she perches in the nests of other host birds like Crows, who look similar to them but sound and act vastly different. They go as far as pushing aside the Crow’s eggs, making room for her children there in the stable home the Crow has painstakingly woven for her family.
The koels thus, grow up with a violent lineage of displacement and the inate need to keep fighting to survive. But, never nurtured to feel safe in a home she could build herself, the mother does what she must to keep her eggs alive - even if it means having another bird raise them as her own.
Drawing parallels with these acts of survival, in this video work, the artist embodies the Koyal bird while collaborating with dancer Angelica Joy, who embodies the heartbroken Crow. Between symbolism and repetition their cultural identities find themselves muddled in the amorphous borders of nature, geography and memory in this sonorous world.
In the soundscape of this piece, the Cuckoo/ Koyal bird is accompanied by the sweet, shrill song of the ghungroo/ payal - an Indian ornament worn around the ankle that is adorned with small jingling bells. While the Crow’s caws are represented via the clang of spoons and forks clashing with domestic vessels.
The Koyal conveys her identity through the actions of the Indian Sign Language and signing the word sugar/sweet to mimic her sound. The Crow on the other hand signs in British Sign Language and her identity is represented by the warm greeting of hello.
As the video carries on, the Koyal puts on a pair of black gloves to hide her red eyes from the Crow, she signs the action for ‘mother’ in British Sign Language to get the Crow to trust her and just as the gloves come off - she leaves her children in another’s nest to be raised with care.
