During the last couple of weeks, I have often found myself at the café of the Museum of Goa near Saligao, staring at the adjacent forest, r...
During the last couple of weeks, I have often found myself at the café of the Museum of Goa near Saligao, staring at the adjacent forest, reading, drinking coffee and admiring the installations of my friend and artist Subodh Kerkar. The museum receives a steady flow of visitors all day – masked, socially distant, and decidedly heterogenous. Families, honeymooners, friends, art lovers – all kinds of people converge every day. Some look bemusedly at the art. Others try to read the text that accompanies each work. And almost everyone takes photographs.
There are a variety of ways of seeing and responding to art – each visitor brings her unique perspective. This is what makes a museum a vibrant space, its objective realised via the collaborative participation of the visitor. At the Museum of Goa, I found visitors not only photographing the art but also taking their photographs with the art – selfies, group photos, inventive family portraits. I watched them for long, like it was a performance, and thought about their need to photograph themselves with the art. Is it purely for social media? To announce a holiday in Goa? To expose their date with art? A social statement? A document of...
