IFA@Assam: Looking At the Tree Again: An exhibition of photographs by Zubeni Lotha | Assam State Museum | December 19, 2017

India Foundation for the Arts
in collaboration with the
Assam State Museum, Guwahati
presents
Looking At the Tree Again
An exhibition of Photographs by Zubeni Lotha
Opening: Tuesday, December 19, 2017 | 02:00 PM
On view from: December 19-December 24, 2017 | 10:00 AM-05:00 PM | Assam State Museum
Gopinath Bordoloi Road, Mawhati, Ambari, Guwahati, Assam - 781 001

Join us for an exhibition by photographer Zubeni Lotha at the Assam State Museum, Guwahati.

In 1936, the Austrian ethnologist Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf, in his photographs of the Konyak Nagas, created the first archetypal and universal image of the Nagas as a 'primitive' people. Photographer Zubeni Lotha critiques Fürer-Haimendorf's images of the Konyak Nagas, published in his book titled Naked Nagas, and, his relationship with and understanding of the community. She looks at how this 'colonial construction' of identity and representation of the Nagas was framed by the lens of early anthropology in British India. Looking at the Tree Again sets out to study and reinterpret Fürer-Haimendorf's photographs and explore the ways in which the daily life of the Konyak Nagas can be portrayed and understood today.

Zubeni Lotha is a photographer from Dimapur, Nagaland. Her work has been published in Outlook Traveller and The Caravan, and she has contributed to The New York Times and Random House blogs. Her practice captures snippets of tribal life in Nagaland in the face of rapid socio-economic change. Her project How Do I Look, questions the idea of Naga culture, identity and representation and her ongoing work on her hometown—Dimapur 797112 —was exhibited in New Delhi in 2012.

Zubeni Lotha received a grant from India Foundation for the Arts under the Arts Research programme, with support from Titan Company Limited.

If you would like to know more about this event, please contact tanveerajsi@indiaifa.org