This photography project connects Bengaluru and Glasgow

The cluster of six portraits which collectively make up Queer Samsara, one of the exhibits at the ongoing Inheritance exhibition at Kanike Studios in Bengaluru’s Cooke Town, has a retro, otherworldly feel to it, encapsulating ideas of transience and ephemerality. “I feel everyone performs different identities, and for me, it is performing my queerness,” says the Bengaluru-based Gulati, one of the 13 young South Asians-- 6 from Bengaluru and 7 from Glasgow-- exploring shared histories, memories and identities between South Asia and the UK, through photography. Identity and inheritance Ideas around identity, both individual and collective, are reflected in nearly every photograph on display at this exhibition, the outcome of an international collaboration between The Museum of Art & Photography Bengaluru, Kanike, Glasgow Life Museums, and Street Level Photoworks as part of the British Council’s Our Shared Cultural Heritage programme. For young people According to Shilpa Vijayakrishnan, Head of Education & Outreach at MAP, this Indo-UK collaborative project’s main objective is to bring young people to the fold of museums, heritage, and art spaces. Then there is Roshni Advani’s Ootak Baa, which documents the relationship between food and belonging; Chrislyn Naysha Pereira’s Beauty Queens Eat Red Onions, which brings together aspects of heritage, race and beauty; and Tanvi Mallapur’s Stitching Memories, a cyanotype on embroidered cloth, which serves as an ode to the inherited objects, memories and cultural traditions that shape one’s identity.