Time Stops at Salvador

Sikka,who has purchased land at the sleepy village in Goa,has produced this body of work after a careful,two-year study of the environment and its people. “I usually work on an idea for three years before I decide to show it,” says the alumnus of the Parsons School of Design,New York. His previous body of work,shown at Mumbai’s Chatterjee & Lal Gallery,showcased the evolving urban landscape of India,while this suite is entirely personal.

“My family and I moved to Salvador and this story about the village has emerged from my personal perspective. It is the story of a person who has moved to a small village from a big city to capture the simplicity of life there,but I have made a conscious effort not to make it look exotic,” says the 34-year-old of his limited-edition photographs,priced between Rs 2 and 4 lakh.

True,the images are not exotic. But they are rife with their own flavour of melancholy and longing. A telling frame is a shot of an empty fridge in a bare room with peeling paint. This is not the prosperous and lively Goa that most tourists visit,but a place that time passed over,and Sikka’s images evoke these haunting settings with a twist of magical realism that could be straight out of a Márquez novel.

Peter Nagy,who has been collecting and promoting Sikka’s work,says,“Sikka eschews forts and palaces,the exoticised backdrop of historical India that has been over-photographed. Instead,he hears the voice of India’s multitude in spaces that are rarely experienced by anyone else.”

Sikka will also be showing a retrospective of his fashion photography at W+ K Exp,Sheikh Sarai,from November 1.

Contact Nature Morte at 29561596