Goa Familia

GOA FAMILIA

Special Project Curator: Lina Vincent

The Goa Familia Project is conceived as an evolving archive that explores and documents the multidimensional aspects of family histories. Directed at seeking out physical material such as photographs, postcards, ancestral heirlooms and memorabilia, as well as oral and recorded histories, the archive will become a participatory space for people to contribute personal and collective stories. These stories help us reflect on the past and present in interesting ways. 

The project will begin with the mapping of Panaji and extend across Goa, gathering and compiling family histories that feed into the larger cultural milieu. Looking backwards from a digitally advanced time, the rarity of the printed photo album makes it special. These albums, slides, negatives, prints, along with countless objects that have survived the passage of time, become associated with notions of identity and belonging, rootedness and dislocation. They reflect emotional experience and nostalgia and support manufactured and fictional representations. 

Against a background of swiftly changing contexts, this physical + digital repository will attempt to bring these varied stories into the public sphere and (re)discover diverse trajectories of history that lie alongside and beneath popular, iconic portrayals. Through engagement with family histories, the Project would like to find ways in which to engage collaboratively with the local and produce an interface for discussion on common and disputed historical terrain. 

Disclaimer : The views and opinions expressed in any performance, artwork or installation do not reflect the official policy or position of the institution.