When Babli left her village in Budaun, Uttar Pradesh, for Delhi with her mother and siblings, they left with a few clothes and one family photograph. Her father had died shortly before they left, and the photograph, altered at a studio, was aimed at bringing him into the frame, to complete the family picture.
Today, that photograph holds her father, brother and grandmother together, even though they were never photographed at the same time. Babli’s story is among those featured in ‘What Women Carry’, a photography and storytelling exhibition by the Margins to Access Project (MAP), which looks at the objects women hold on to through migration, displacement, changing ideas of home, and what people choose to carry when they cannot take everything with them. The exhibition is on view till today at the Convention Centre foyer of the India Habitat Centre.
Roshni Shanker, executive director and founder of MAP, says the women featured in the exhibition come from communities that MAP works with, “including forcibly displaced migrants, inter-state migrant workers, survivors of gender-based violence, and women from low-income and socially marginalised communities.” Some have crossed international borders because of conflict and insecurity, while others have moved within India for marriage, work, or to seek better opportunities.
What connects these experiences is the personal meaning women attach to the things they choose to keep.
Fragmented lives
“Displacement is often discussed through numbers: people displaced, borders crossed, and documents issued, but those numbers can obscure what leaving truly means in a person’s everyday life,” says Shanker.
The idea for the exhibition came from asking questions like, ‘When you have to leave, what do you choose to take with you?’ ‘What is so important to you even when space is limited?’ Shanker tells TMS.
Curator Niyati Singh notes that the exhibition was careful not to conflate migration and displacement. “Displacement and migration are not catch-all terms,” she says, adding that MAP wanted the stories to reflect the different circumstances in which women move. For women, displacement can be shaped by factors beyond the loss of a physical home. “Economic dependence, family responsibilities, gender-based violence, access to documents and services, social expectations, and the need to care for children or family members” can all influence whether, when and where a woman moves, she adds.
“What the exhibition tries to convey is that displacement is not just the moment of leaving,” Singh remarks. “It is a continuum that can continue to shape a woman's life long after the physical journey is over.” Finding housing, employment, healthcare, education, legal assistance and a sense of safety can remain challenging in a new place.
The objects offer a way of understanding this longer journey. Singh says they can become “fragments of a home that no longer exists in the same way”.
Memories in the frame
The exhibition features photographs of a carpet that Zoya carried with her from Iran; silver anklets gifted to Rama by her mother-in-law, which she carried with her when she moved to Delhi from Agra; and a colourful bamboo basket that Anita inherited from her grandmother and that has travelled with her across three generations, alongside many other stories of displacement, memory and the objects women carry with them.
The photographs displayed in the show have been taken by Gaurav Menghaney and Meenal Upreti. Singh says their sensitivity towards photographing and working with the women was important to the project because the intention was “not to produce images of hardship”. “We wanted the photographs to retain the dignity and individuality of the women, while allowing the objects they chose to carry to become central to the visual narrative,” she adds.
Upreti photographed “forcibly displaced” women from Myanmar, Afghanistan and Iran in their homes across Delhi. She says the experience offered an opportunity to understand their lives through conversations.
Meanwhile, Menghaney, who photographed communities from Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh who had migrated to Delhi, points out that the objects became “a key to their past, to their identity”.
Making identity visible
The photographs offer a way of looking closely at the objects and the memories they hold. Singh says the medium allows viewers to see the contrast between an object's ordinary appearance and the “extraordinary weight of the story” attached to it.
“A written story can tell us that an object is important. A photograph makes us look at the object itself: its texture, its age, its wear, its size, its imperfections, and even the gentleness with which it is held,” she points out.
The photographs are displayed alongside short handwritten accounts from the women. The two are intended to work together — the photograph draws the viewer towards the object, while the accompanying story provides a glimpse into the life and memory behind it.
The exhibition also seeks to move away from presenting displaced women only through vulnerability. While loss and hardship are part of many of the stories, Singh says these women continue to make choices, and rebuild their lives.
“We hope it makes visible something that is often lost when displacement and migration are represented primarily through images of suffering, poverty and vulnerability: women’s resilience, courage and agency,” she says.