Wera Saether Saraswati   Open to the public: 07. August – 20. September 2009. Every weekdays: 14.00 – 19.00 Weekend: 11.00 – 19.00
Saraswati · Why India?

Wera Saether: Saraswati

personal history
I came to India, i.e. to Kolkata, for the first time in 1976, as a newly trained psychologist who had also studied the History of Religion, especially the mystical traditions of India. I had written three books by 1976, but had not yet discovered the magic, as well as the tool of research, that a camera represents. (This happened about ten years later). The vision of non-violence as presented by Mahatma Gandhi was strong in me.

Since 1976, I have been back more than 15 times. I must have spent about two years on the continent, about six months in northern Bangladesh for the sake of local musical traditions that have been at the edge of vanishing.

Many books have been written by me based on my Indian wanderings. Three non-fiction books for children, three novels for children. Essays, a travelogue etc. Chosen song-poems from the long and very rich Bengali song tradition have been translated from Bengali into my mother tongue, Norwegian. It was published in 2005. A book of black and white photographs made in Kolkata and poetry (Norwegian) will be out in Norway in September 2009, with an exhibition at The House of Literature in Oslo.

a double gaze
I know myself as a Norwegian breathing in and with my mother tongue, and a gaze formed in northern Europe, and as another, emotionally Indian or constantly born within a Bengali bhab, which means feeling & spirituality.

I have to travel back and forth between this northern ”peace” and the myriad of mental and visual forms of South Asia.
I have to translate myself to myself all the time.

There is also the strong bond to Budapest, for unknown reasons, but certainly because of the presence of the Roma population (with Indian origins), the history of Hungarian Jews, the strong presence of folk as well as classical music, the ”impossibility” of the Hungarian language and the nearness that Hungary has to ”my” India.

choosing, or being chosen by, India
I have, long since, chosen the Indian subcontinent as a place for my wanderings, with and without camera. There is, long since, no way for me ”out of India”. This is a statement of fact, neither sad nor non-sad. It is an angel I am not fighting with. Ask me what my home town is, and I will answer: Kolkata (Calcutta). Ask me why, and I will stammer. There is an immediate experience of ”being home”. The joy of the direct and shameless gaze.

The photographer watches and is being watched; is being talked to, and may choose to talk back. The camera is ”a transitional object”: We play together. I chose to study Bengali, (also) for the sake of my photography.

Though the bond is stronger to Kolkata than to other Indian cities, and stronger to the Bengali region than to other areas of the huge place called South Asia, I have been, and will go back to, Benares (Varanasi) and villages in eastern and central India as well. After all, the photographs now being exhibited at Mai Mano are mainly made in Benares. It is, however, in Kolkata that I have learned about Saraswati, goddess of art and ”hidden river”.

artist and grassroot-worker
There is no way a poet cannot be a poet. There is no way that somebody who has integrated the tool of the camera into herself can tear it way. I travel with my tools. And I create my own forms, as books and photographs. This is, however, not the end of the story.

For about five years I have been fully devoted to a grassroot project, called ”SUNO/Hear It” in northern Bangladesh. When there, I record music, make written notes and take pictures too. At present, I am also devoted to a very new project in West-Bengal, empowering poor children mainly through colours, and with a strong bond to a village of folk (pat) artists in the district of Medinipur. We will also try to strengthen environmental awareness in the region.

To create art forms will always need a solitary path. The grassroot creativity and the plight of vulnerable people on drowning lands in South Asia make my dream become very elementary, or basic – and somehow very collective.

Wera Sæther

photo: Róbert Kassay