The artists
Dilliwale Project, 2003 – 2005, Videostills
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Dilliwale Project, 2003 – 2005, Videostills
In her poetic photo reportages, Farhana Syeda documents the problems of Muslim migrants from Bangladesh in the slums of Delhi and Kalkutta. She responds to an international, biased photo journalism that is thirsting for sensational images of starvation and catastrophes in her home country Bangladesh. During a visit in India, the artist tried to find illegal immigrants from Bangladesh in the slums of New Delhi and Kalkutta. She created the "Dilliwale Project", which deals with the different forms of migration, hierarchies and urban fragmentation. "Dilliwaley Kaun" means "lawful citizen of Delhi", hence exactly that, which the illegal, poor Muslim immigrant from Bangladesh will never be. The reportage conveys the impression of uprooting, exclusion, social barriers and religious refuge. The almost poetical texts accompanying the images are taken from interviews with two Bengali women, and their friends and neighbours, who are legal inhabitants of New Delhi. In the course of the assimilation process, language plays an important role as a factor for being either included or excluded. While Hindi, which is mostly spoken by the under-educated inhabitants of the slums, necessarily leads to exclusion and stigmatisation within the urban community, it gains an inherent value in Syeda's work, which is even still noticeable in the English translation. Farhana Syeda's images create an intimate space, where the Bengali inhabitants of the slums in Delhi, for which reality does not seem to provide a place, are becoming important persons with a genuine identity and dignity.
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