https://www.heraldgoa.in/goa/lessons-from-aparanta/457875/
18 years after he helped to save the Old Goa Medical College heritage building from being converted into a shopping mall – for which our feckless state government had already handed it over to a Delhi-based company – it was inexpressibly moving earlier this month to find Ranjit Hoskote happily at work in that magnificent 19th century landmark once again, with his sprawling, masterful curation of OTHERLAND: Snatching Choreography from the Chaos one of the standout highlights of this bountiful season of the arts in Goa. It was an excellent opportunity to interview him about what occurred here so consequentially almost two decades ago, and also ask about what remains to be done. *How does it feel to be back in the Old GMC after 18 years?* Hoskote: When the Serendipity Arts Festival (SAF) invited me back (as a curator for its first three editions) to curate a special project for its tenth-anniversary edition, I chose the Old GMC as my venue without the slightest hesitation. This was indeed a tremendous homecoming - to return, after nearly 19 years, to the historic building that we saved with the very first exhibition ever held there. ‘Aparanta' became the rallying point for a citizens' movement to save the Old GMC from being handed over to private enterprise to be turned into a mall. Instead, we argued that it should be transformed into a cultural space for the people [and] this has truly come to pass. I feel vindicated that our mission has been successful. *How important was Aparanta in your own curatorial journey?* Hoskote: It was the tenth exhibition that I had curated, preceded by solo exhibitions, research-based group shows, a multi-year transcontinental co-curatorial project and two major retrospectives. But 'Aparanta' was on a different scale altogether - in its number of artists and number of works, its historic venue and the publicity that it received, and the vigorous debate that it provoked, it came across as a mid-scale biennale. Soon after, I went on to co-curate the 7th Gwangju Biennale with Okwui Enwezor and Hyunjin Kim, then curated India's first-ever stand-alone national pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and other high-profile and large-scale projects - in all of which the experience of curating 'Aparanta' held me in very good stead indeed. I look back to 'Aparanta' as a turning point in my curatorial journey. Above all, in deeply personal terms, it marked my circling back to Goa, the land of my early childhood and of my diasporic ancestors, and my re-dedication to Goa's cultural life. You cannot imagine the immense lifting of spirit that I experience when I am back in the presence of the great rivers of my childhood, the Zuari and the Mandovi. In a very fundamental way [all this] brought me back to Goa - and I have continued to return every year, developing strong and nourishing connections with Goa's vibrant institutions and platforms. *You wrote back then that Goa was filled with very good artists who foundered for a lack of context. Is that still true?* Hoskote: Goa's artists, especially during the last few decades, have formed robust links with art schools such as the MSU Baroda, the SNAC Hyderabad and the Sir JJ School of Art, Bombay. A few of them have received gallery representation as well. Meanwhile, a number of artists from other parts of the country - to name but four: Dayanita Singh, Nikhil Chopra, Minam Apang and Rajyashri Goody - have chosen to live, whether for the part of the year or more permanently, in Goa. From my point of view, it is important that artists practising in Goa should develop their own platforms, spaces of assembly and collaboration - as, in fact, they have done from time to time. I think, here, of the Goan Art Forum of the 1990s, the printmakers collective that Viraj Naik and his colleagues established in Vasco during the early 2000s, as well as of the role now played by Sunaparanta as a crucible of artistic and cultural energy, and to several other such initiatives. The recognition of such initiatives was, in fact, an important subtext of our 'Aparanta' project, nearly two decades ago. *Goa lacks a museum to do justice to the state's art legacies. What are your recommendations to get something like this in place?* Hoskote: In my SAF 2018 exhibition, 'The Sacred Everyday: Embracing the Risk of Difference' - which was mounted across the Adilshah Palace and the Convent of Santa Monica, Old Goa - I had the privilege of including a set of sculptures depicting early Tantric yoginis from the collection of the Goa State Museum. This came about through a patient and mutually respectful process of dialogue with Radha Bhave, the Director of this noble institution, which had then been relocated to the ground floor of the Adilshah Palace. Dr Bhave very kindly permitted me to go through the Museum's accession registers - and I was amazed by the richness and variety of the objects, documents and materials represented there. It is a matter of profound sorrow and shame that the Goa State Museum has been confined to its present location, where its holdings are endangered by damp and termite infestation. Goa is a state with an extraordinarily kaleidoscopic and cosmopolitan history, its connections reaching high into the Himalayas, deep into the Deccan, and wide across the oceans as far as Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro, Luanda and Maputo, Macao and Kagoshima. It is absolutely vital that Goa should honour its history by ensuring that the Goa State Museum has a properly established, beautifully designed and professionally curated and managed complex of its own.
