Mohini Chandra

Woman photographer Mohini Chandra’s work deals with articulations of identity and globalized spaces, and the role of the photographic in relation to memory and migration.

As a child Mohini spent time in Fiji and traveled widely with her family within the Indian-Fijian diaspora. She has an interest in photographic histories and the processes of visual culture within colonial, anthropological and ethnographic discourses and the imagery of contemporary globalized cultures.

From the series Kikau Street

This [the mirror] is how my mother, when she wanted the little outboard to come and pick us up… she would shine this. This was a signal for the boatman to come…and then we used to get on the boat and go.

My father’s house in Kikau Street, Suva, Fiji. Childhood home. The last of our family have migrated to the USA. A wedding dress left behind. Downtown Suva. Pacific metropolis. Port. Rusting boats from around the Pacific rest here.  Island Studios kept busy with Green Card and Passport Photos. Nausori.  A river flows there. Cyclonic. The weather is changing. The river, swollen.  Colonial sugar mill, plantations, barracks. The bridge. Great-Grandfather cut the cane. Rebellion. The interior. A volcanic landscape. On the beach, a shipwreck. At night they say, voices can be heard.