Centralia by Poulomi Basu

Abstract

Centralia launches its readers headfirst into a series of powerful and apocalyptic opening landscapes. Pale, barren rock face gives way to dark, nocturnal scenes in which fire bubbles up from below as if the underworld is attempting to escape its inner core.

The landscape, central and eastern India to be precise, is a reoccurring theme within Poulomi Basu's epic publication Centralia. India's forests, waterways, mountains and rural villages are the sites in which the Calcutta-born transmedia artist sets the scene for our education into a historic yet overlooked conflict raging between the Indian government and the People's Liberation Guerrilla Army (fig. 1). The latter (known as the PGLA) comprises the Adivasis, a collective name for the many Indigenous peoples of India. According to census reports, Adivasi communities constitute 8.6 percent of the nation's total population, representing some 104.3 million citizens with over two hundred distinct peoples, speaking more than one hundred languages across India, primarily based in the mountainous regions.

As with many historic conflicts, the Adivasis’ struggles can be traced back to colonialism and India's period of British rule, which brought with it an encroachment on Indigenous lands. In the mid-nineteenth century the communities fought back, resulting in laws which prevented the sale of land to non-Adivasis. Many outsiders found workarounds, however, and were able to exploit the system. In Basu's publication, the artist adopts a disorientating artistic approach to introduce us to the contemporary issue rooted in this layered history: a David and Goliath–style war in which military might and corporate cash continue a battle over land and precious natural resources. Basu's opening landscapes situate this conflict, presenting visual metaphors for environmental injustices and the historic impact of man's greed on our natural world.

Centralia's exact subject matter and the precise details of this specific “far-off” conflict might be an abstract concept to many, but the repercussions are familiar and as predictable as time itself. We know that during conflict, across the globe, women, girls, and minority communities are disproportionally affected. Basu has spent a lifetime dedicating her art and activism to upholding the stories and challenges faced by women, notably those in the Global South. Her previous works To Conquer Her Land, A Ritual of Exile, and Mothers of Isis all speak to the resilience and resistance of women and girls. Basu spent an unpredictable ten-year period gathering evidence, building trust, and collecting the photography required for Centralia. It is unsurprising, then, that throughout her publication women feature as main protagonists and their stories create an integral part of framing this particular war.

It is reported that around 60 percent of the PLGA members are women. Basu captures the array of women's roles within this conflict, from active participant to unwilling bystander. Two young guerrilla fighters share a tender moment: dressed in fatigues and covered in an assortment of weaponry, they gently hold hands (fig. 2). Two barefoot women emerge onto a pathway, purple scarves billowing behind them (fig. 3). A mother gazes out of a fly screen, clutching her child. An elderly woman cries tears into the rivets of her quietly lined face. Basu's photographs represent those fighting in the war but also the collateral damage: the local villagers, residents, farmers, and children caught in the cross fire between insurgents and paramilitary.

There are men here, too, for what would war be without the presence of masculinity? Some of them are corpses, others operate technology or brandish weaponry, but it is the women you notice. Through their commitment to the PLGA, they have transcended their gender and gained the respect of their male peers. In one photograph, a man's decorated gravestone is accompanied by those of three women; the scene is seemingly unburdened by the usual trappings of gender and hierarchy (fig. 4).

Between the pages of Centralia are wafer-thin papers which include powerful portraits of female martyrs. In these pixelated, abstracted, found photographs, we discover Nirmala, shot at close range in 1998 while defending her sentry (fig. 5); Padma, also killed in 1998, while sheltering to load her gun (fig. 6); Ruppi, raped and murdered in 1995; Aruna, struck down by a comrade who mistook her for a bear in 1996 (fig. 7). In Aruna's photo, through the pixels, you can see her smiling. Her hair is braided into a thick black plait pulled across her right shoulder.

The accompanying texts inform us that these women played important roles during their short lifetimes. They created and amplified women's organizations, demanded rights for workers and fair pay for goods, and taught others in the community to read. They mobilized people to join the cause. Though many of their ages are not recorded, it is unlikely many of them lived beyond their thirties. Basu's thoughtful inclusion of these women's faces and their stories provides them with agency and life after death, continuing her artistic and humanist commitment to supporting the empowerment of women (figs. 8–9).

Women play a significant role in the defense of global land rights. It is perilous work. The subjugation of gender roles and power dynamics puts women at a high probability of violence, particularly those in Indigenous regions. As an Asian woman born and raised in Calcutta with her own history of gender violence to contend with, Basu understands this and how the intersectionality of race, class, caste, and gender merge, with dangerous consequences. Her photography attests to it and contributes to a growing contemporary visual language which proposes an important link between ecocide and femicide, particularly within native and rural communities. Indigenous women are taking increasingly dangerous risks in protesting against ecocide and the impact of extraction, mining, deforestation, over-cultivation, and industrialization on their families and communities. At the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (also known as COP26), Indigenous women actively spoke out about the extraction industry's so-called “boomtown” or “man camp” environments and their complicit role in the rise of murdered and missing Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people.

Throughout Centralia, Basu presents a series of highly cinematic photographs which are tricky to decipher. In viewing the book, it is unclear what is real and what is constructed, a sophisticated, purposeful tactic that the artist adopts to misdirect and (mis)represent the propaganda of war—for, she argues, the first casualty of conflict is surely the truth. It is a bewildering experience, resulting in an unusual and frantic reader analysis of images for clues as to their truthfulness. The use of photographs as “documents,” and the medium's complex relationship to looking and othering, has led Basu on a personal artistic journey spanning over twenty years. Increasingly uncomfortable with the limiting techniques of documentary photography and frustrated by the medium's inability to be flexible, present nuance, or attract the desired audience, Basu has moved toward a more dynamic visual language in which the book is just one tool.

Like Basu's increasingly expansive artistic approach, Centralia is best viewed as an experience. Her ongoing process now includes VR and new frontiers, performance, film, photography, and installation, even harnessing the power of the comic book medium in order to engage a broader demographic in the debate around ecofeminism, gender violence, and global justice.