Anti-memorials commemorate Partition of India and Bangladesh Liberation War to reveal silenced counter-memories of women

15th August, 2022 marked the 75th anniversary of the Partition of the Indian subcontinent and the emergence of India and Pakistan as independent nation-states; and 16th December, 2022 marks the 51st anniversry of the Bangladesh Liberation War and the creation of Bangladesh. Pritika Chowdhry’s retrospective titled Unbearable Memories, Unspeakable Histories: Partition Anti-Memorial Project, on view Saturday, August 6, through Saturday, December 16, 2022, commemorates these two events. The exhibition’s title, alludes to the painful and silenced narratives of women that have been omitted from mainstream discourses of the 1947 Partition of India and of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War.

India’s independence from colonial rule in 1947 is forever linked with its ghostly twin, the Partition. Pritika Chowdhry’s critically acclaimed exhibition is an artistic investigation of the Partition of India in 1947, which created Pakistan, and eventually, Bangladesh in 1971. The Partition is central to modern identity and geopolitics in South Asia. It triggered the largest, most rapid migration in human history and is often compared to the Holocaust. Over 20 million people were displaced in an unprecedented mass migration. Approximately 2 million people died in the communal violence across the new borders, called the Radcliffe Line.

Partition Anti-Memorial Project founded on the 60th anniversary of the Partition in 2007, is Chowdhry’s ongoing research-based project that excavates subjugated knowledge about the 1947 Partition of India and the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, which was essentially a second Partition, directly caused by the first one. As Chowdhry researched feminist historiographies and recounts from her own family she soon found that the glorified storytelling surrounding the Partitions of India and Pakistan failed to include experiences of women, marginalized groups, and transnational connections. As her research progressed, a complex web of interconnected…