How does one bring oneself near to experience? Veena Das explores a series of paintings by the Delhi based painter Arpana Caur, through which the artist rendered the grievous killings of Sikhs in 1984 after the assassination of the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. She shows how through dream like transitions, the movement between the painterly and cinematic screen as well as the dialogue between line and color, Caur recreates and gives life to the dead inventing a language of mourning that departs completely from the stereotypical renderings of the dead as martyrs.

Veena Das

Veena Das is the Kreiger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology and Professor of Humanities at Johns Hopkins University. Her most recent book is entitled Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary. She has written extensively on social suffering and violence and is currently engaged in understanding urban poverty, citizenship and ethical projects of self-making. She is collaborating with a team of researchers on issues of health care in India. Das is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Third World Academy of Scientists. She is also the recipient of an honorary doctorate from the University of Chicago.