‘My work is led by micro moments’

Chandigarh-born Gauri Gill traces her roots to Tarn Taran district of Punjab. ‘The Village on the Highway’ marks a continuation of her practice, which has continually focused on ‘how people in precarity find ways to float, rather than drown’. Among her notable works are her archival notebooks on the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom, The Americans, about Indian immigrants in the USA, and the ongoing series ‘Notes from the Desert’ on marginalised communities in Western Rajasthan, for which she won the Prix Pictet in 2023.

Excerpts from a longer interview:

No one could predict how long would the agitation go on for. When exactly did you decide to document it?

I am led from the heart and issues of justice. I would return because I found the site so compelling and ultimately energising. So often we artists and intellectuals get depressed because we spend our time reading the news or on twitter. Here, one actually felt buoyed from witnessing the farmers determined optimism and flow of generosity, which included feeding everyone, including the police in their temporary communal kitchens; the medical camps they opened to serve all who needed assistance; libraries to share knowledge, etc. It was good to be reminded of how feet on the ground can move things in a way that social media and online battles cannot. The micro moments form larger moments.

Your photographs capture what you call ‘the village’ in various moods. Contemplative, defiant, easy, unsettling... How many visits did it take to create this vast body of work? And what can you recall about it?

There were several visits. What stays with me is the sheer tenacity of farmers, especially when things looked hopeless. I remember a long summer going into monsoon when numbers had dwindled on the site because farmers had to return home to tend to the land. Representatives from each family stayed on the site. The standoff had gone on so long, it seemed nothing might ever change. Farmers were dying. I felt down even as a visitor. But I remember doughty elders saying to me, ‘One day the tide will turn’. There is a phrase and guiding philosophy in Sikhism called Chardi Kala, which implies choosing optimism even when you can see the difficulties ahead. I saw that spirit. Only when the laws were overthrown and there was finally some jubilation on the site, did farmers speak of how hard it had been. In that moment at the end as farmers dismantled what they had made, I also saw them weep as they said goodbye to each other, because they had lived through something unimaginable and formed new and indissoluble bonds with strangers from across their own state, and even the country.

This protest was an emotional moment for Punjabis, the anger, the determination, the compassion, the passion, was writ large on their faces. But you decided against capturing the faces. Why?

As you know, I am Punjabi myself and very aware of the importance and urgency of the protest. In fact, the first people I serendipitously ran into when I first visited were the farmers from my own ancestral village in Tarn Taran, Alladinpur, with whom I also ate my first langar meal at the site.

Initially, I saw no reason to document the protests at all because the farmers themselves were doing such a good job, as were the many activists living on the site. As I continued to return, I found that no one was documenting the amazing structures that had manifested at the site and enabled the farmers to survive a whole year on a highway. This formed a completely handmade and homegrown architecture of resistance, in which farmers ingeniously repurposed tractors, trailers, trolleys, trucks and other farming equipment, continually adapting them to allow for the vagaries of changing seasons and extreme elements.

The farmers had travelled long distances from their villages to New Delhi to make arguments for their very survival. They arrived with very few economic resources and with great uncertainty as to what lay ahead. Forced to sit on the highway when they were barred from the Capital, they began to transform the vehicles that they had arrived on — or the equipment that they used daily and knew intimately — into uniquely habitable homes. Doors appeared through tarpaulin, walls arose from bamboo and thermocol, and string and tape held together wood. Well used vehicles suddenly became bedrooms, storerooms and living rooms. Communal spaces such as libraries, medical camps, small shops and round the clock kitchens manifested as if out of thin air. I began to witness the road itself dug up into patches of earth to plant vegetables such as cauliflower and radishes.

This sitting down on the highway lasted a whole year, so over time, the farmers had to adapt the structures to allow for not only the changing seasons but also unforeseen calamities such as the Covid pandemic. In the winter, when elderly farmers were forced to bathe in the open in five-degree centigrade temperatures, washing machines linked to tubes and buckets appeared to enable communal washing. In the summer, the farmers added khus coolers to their homes; in the monsoon, mosquito nets shrouded the structures.

I don’t believe that only the faces of the farmers tell their story. What they made, the materiality of the protest was intrinsic to them, and the unique spirit of their endeavour. Rural people are being written out across the world, and there is shrinking space for them to be heard. Urban folk complained about personal discomfort and detours in their travel on the highways. But the truth is that the mental divide between urban and rural populations is now so vast that most city people do not seem to remember where our food comes from. The farmers struggle powerfully visibilised those whom we undeniably rely upon, yet refuse to acknowledge, let alone heed. And the spaces and structures cannot be separated from the struggle — they enabled it, speak of it, and now even form memorials to it. The architecture of protest was created by people to serve a unique exigency. The structures spoke to me of that.

How difficult was it to achieve this emptiness because the place was bustling with activity?

A lot of waiting was involved, and it is in fact the bedrock of photography because waiting also leads to a kind of heightened attention. But then, there was a lot of talking and eating which filled our time too! I learned from every moment.

How does this series relate to your larger body of work? Like your previous projects, ‘Notes from the Desert’, do you plan to have an ongoing relationship with Punjab's dispossessed?

I live in Delhi but have spent considerable amounts of time over the last 25 years learning from rural friends, Adivasi artists, Jogi friends from the so-called denotified tribes, and other imperiled groups. I am interested in the novel ways used by people with their backs against the wall to survive, even create joy, despite an economy of resources. To me, there is an utmost nobility in that unique imagination. In this series, troubled rural workers brought their very bodies, tools and fight for survival right to the centre of power and managed to occupy space with great creativity and resourcefulness.

My work happens in an organic way and is led by micro moments, and by my friends, so let us see what the future holds.