Curated By Meenakshi Thirukode in collaboration with Asia Art Archive
Unlearning Lessons from my Father is a poetic response to questions around archiving. From within a political and cultural temporality that does not ‘archive’ to record, what would a ‘looking back at’ entail? Mani looks to his own personal biography and its connection to the history of colonisation; particularly at the forced migration of trees and plants which include cashew, pineapple, rubber and tapioca. Mani claims his father and brother sold cashews to the nearest state border in order to make money to send the children to school while his parents were rubber tappers working at various plantations in Kerala. Mani therefore weaves a narrative that connects colonial and material histories of these fruits and plants to the personal histories connected to indigenous lands, bodies and knowledge.