What defines a house and how, amidst a fractured world, does it blossom into a home?
To many people, 'home' means many different things. For some, it's the family residence or the community where they grew up, their state or country of origin, or their loved ones or significant others. For others, especially for a vast majority of people who identify as queer or a part of the LGBTQ+ community, the idea of home is not thought of in the most traditional sense. For many queer individuals across the world, the idea of 'home' is shaped by the twin concerns of home both as a narrative metaphor and as a real-world shelter.
'To Make A Home With You', a group exhibition conceptualised and curated by Mihir Thakkar and presented by Art + Charlie, Mumbai, explores the human need for a 'home' — both as a metaphor and a real-world place of acceptance where, in the words of Thakkar, "neglected feelings can find shelter." The exhibition brings together five queer artists from across India who, in their distinctive bodies of work, reflect on this simple, yet powerful need for comfort and belonging — even if that comfort is imperfect.
"We all seek a home, a home for comfort; a home for safety," photographer-gallerist Ayesha Parikh, the founder of Art + Charlie, told me when we spoke about the exhibition last week. "And that's not unlike cishet people. So, 'To Make A Home With You' — while from a queer lens because, of course, Mihir is queer himself and so are all the five artists we're showing — talks about something far bigger and broader, which is this idea of something to call a home".
To Make A Home With You is the culmination of a long-term conversation between Parikh and Thakkar, an architect-turned-art-curator. "Since the day Art + Charlie opened up, she (Parikh) has been asking me to do a curatorial project and I've been like, I'm not too sure if I want to do it or not," Thakkar said about how the vision behind the exhibition came about. "But the Art + Charlie space itself, it's such a beautiful Portuguese home, the architecture of it just invited me to create a home. I've been seeing all these shows that Art + Charlie have been putting up, but then I realised that nobody has ever made it into a home or presented it like one, which is where the subject of To Make A Home With You came from".
The exhibition turns the gallery space into a safe space for anybody, be it a heterosexual person or a homosexual person, anybody to come in and just feel that they are understood, they're in a safe space, they are taken care of," Thakkar said. "I think that's what all of us need. And that's exactly what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to give it to all my friends, to my family who constantly hold space for me because I honestly believe what I am today and what I'm able to do today is because of this very important support.
"For queer people, it's so important to find these spaces. Not everybody is as fortunate as I am. I'm very well aware of it, which also invites me to make these spaces, or at least allow people to build these spaces for others."Mihir Thakkar
"The bottom floor talks to this idea of acceptance, in some ways asking for acceptance, as Deepak Deeman did in one of his works, the first work that you see right when you enter the gallery, which is about coming out to his parents," Parikh said. "Then his second work talks about acceptance, but you see these little sort of symbols, like the door being left ajar or how he's holding up the chair of his father while his head is on his lap".
"And the upstairs floor deals with the ideas of finally being accepted, and friendship, and where pockets of comfort are found by these artists. And that's what the show brings. It's a wider discussion from a particular lens, which is a queer lens, and that's the kind dialogue we want to have at Art and Charlie, and really bring back the strength and power of contemporary art as pushing society forward, pushing the conscious, the sort of the collective conscience forward," she said.
Beyond the exhibits on display, Thakkar envisions the exhibition as a safe space for the queer community with screenings and community-building workshops in collaboration with Gaysi Family and Gay Gaze Bombay. A screening of Raqeeb and Manvendra's short film, 'B-25' and a reading of Parmesh Shahani's, 'Queeristan' will be among the highlights of the programming.
To Make A Home With You, curated by Mihir Thakkar, is on view at Art + Charlie, Mumbai, till May 31, 2025. For updates and more information about associated programming, follow Art + Charlie here.
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