Curated by Tanvi Mishra

Photography as a medium has always been entrusted with the responsibility of being a torchbearer of the truth. But what happens when it becomes a medium for telling fictional stories, as a visual interpretation of the world of make-believe and when the author is no longer a purveyor of truth, but a storyteller with a vivid imagination? This selection of works looks at artists exploring the realm of staged images, some recreations of events in history, some retellings of old fables, some fantasy and others performance. It challenges the notion that documentary images, due to their putatively neutral nature, are always meant to be symbols of reality. It brings up questions of why we are more forgiving to cinema, with their fictitious stories inspired from real life instances, but do not allow photography to shed this burden? If so many works are reconstructions of the artist’s own reality, then are the archives they build also fictional?

Featuring:
TODAY’S LIFE AND WAR – Gohar Dashti (Iran)
PARTY – Christina de Middel (Spain)
CHARLI BIKANER – Anonymous/From the collection of Kapil Das (India)
RETURN OF THE PHANTOM LADY – Pushpamala N (India)
A MYTH OF TWO SOULS – Vasantha Yogananthan (France)
THE EXIT OF SHIRIN AND FARHAD – Babak Kazemi (Iran)
INDEFINITELY – Katrin Koenning (Australia)
LETTERS – Sarker Protick (Bangladesh)
AJNA – Shadman Shahid (Bangladesh)