‘Avan Lapli’: Reframing sites of history along the Indian Ocean

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. There is an old-world quality about Shiraz Bayjoo’s works. It is as if the artist has added layers of colour to centuries-old images of fishermen, coastal trees, indentured labour, and more to create a new emotional landscape.

A set of such works,—made using acrylic, resin, voile fabric, dye sublimation ink and wood—forms a part of the artist’s ongoing exhibition, Avan Lapli—his first in India— at Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai. The title of the show, translated as ‘Before the Rain’ alludes to a moment of pause and reflection just before the downpour. Using that as a metaphor, the Mauritius-born and London-based artist allows the viewer to mull over intertwined histories across the Indian Ocean, from Mauritius to Madagascar, along the Swahili coast to coastal India, that have led us to this moment in time.

Bayjoo, 45, arrived at this phrase while researching monsoon trade winds and oceanic currents along the East African coast. These had to be delicately navigated in order to avoid being shipwrecked, or trade off the cargo early to lighten the load home. “These trade winds and currents shaped the entire region, even the location of coastal settlements, and what was traded when and where.

With this thought, the title alludes to the need to wrap up all affairs before it’s too late to reach home," states the artist. The show becomes pertinent at a time when the ideas of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ are being revisited as fluid concepts. It also offers a fresh look at how personal and public archives—including colonial records—can be used to explore complex relationships of migration, trade and the legacy of European colonialism.