Naveen Kishore’s In a Cannibal Time is a show of reverence. It treats theatre like a monolithic goddess, remembering the past and foretelling the future to anyone who cares to listen. In this case, through the lens of self-taught photographer (and founder of Kolkata-based publishing house Seagull Books) Naveen Kishore’s recording of four styles of theatre, over the course of the last quarter of a century.
The photographs — currently on exhibit at the gorgeous Kolkata Centre for Creativity, at Emami Art, in collaboration with Chatterjee & Lal — are from four of Kishore’s significant bodies of work: The Epic and the Elusive (1997), Performing the Goddess (1999), In a Cannibal Time (2002), and The Green Room of the Goddess (2003). It documents what it means to be caught in a holocaust of trauma, to be victims, to be broken and remade. As curator Ranjit Hoskote explains: “In his various works, Kishore never loses sight of the anguish and the exhilaration of the human adventure. The mandate of testimony, the urgency of bearing witness to ideologically fraught and emotionally demanding histories, is central to his work.”
