Post 1 – Back in India!

This is now our 4th trip to India and while some things have become invisible and expected in their familiarity (cows in the road, horns blaring, air you can see, sleeping dogs undisturbed no matter the crowd sidestepping them, people finding shelter anywhere they can, tiny stalls selling everything imaginable one on top of the other) others are still miraculous.  The small, intimate shrines on every street, the always curious and helpful people, the remarkable music, the vibrant life that surrounds you at every turn, the random encounters that soon don’t seem random at all. Serendipity rules. How it is possible that in a city of 13 million, everyone knows everyone is beyond me, but it’s true.

We are back in Kolkata, courtesy of a small grant from the U.S. State Department, to pack up our Following the Box exhibit. It had sat patiently in storage at the Birla Academy, the museum that hosted its inaugural exhibition last February.  Now it is being shipped to its next venue, the Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts in Delhi.  The exhibit opens 11 January.  This blog will chronicle the journey of the show, but more importantly, the journey of two artists, obsessed with a shoebox filled with negatives, photographs and stories from long ago.