Convoy of tractors and trolleys with tarpaulin roofs and bamboo walls, lined along the Delhi border—2021 farmers’ protest is the subject of Gauri Gill’s photo exhibition. The series, titled ‘The Village on the Highway’, is focused on farmers’ life on “road to Delhi” during the protest.
Gill was drawn to what she calls “an unusual, handmade and homegrown architecture of resistance”. Using a large analogue camera, she documented “domestic, daily objects” like cooking pots, khus coolers, water tanks and mosquito nets. The place—temporarily turned into a small “village”—was a communal space for protesters throughout the year.
In 2020, protesting farmers alleged that the three farm laws introduced by the government to allow selling of their produce outside of government-regulated mandis; did not specify a Minimum Support Price (MSP) for crops, and removed certain items (like cereals, potatoes, pulses and onions) from the ‘Essential Commodities’ list.
It was feared that the act would lead to privatisation of agriculture over time and that MSP would be completely eradicated. This resulted in thousands of farmers (particularly from the states of Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh) protesting at the Delhi border. The almost-a-year-long protest led to major upheaval. The farm laws were eventually repealed by the Centre in November 2021.
Gill’s series of photographs exhibited at the Vadehra Art Gallery in New Delhi, show trolleys and tents erected out of tin walls, tarpaulin covers and bamboo sticks. In one of the pictures, white and green flags of Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) can be seen fluttering outside each tent. Another installation displays a cart filled with hay, a patch of cauliflowers (grown at protest site) sprouting out of land, and a horse tied in a makeshift stable. There are posters of Dr B.R. Ambedkar, Bhagat Singh and the Marxist revolutionary, Che Guevera. Messages on wooden walls read, ‘If You Ate Today, Thank A Farmer’ and ‘No Farmers No Food’.
With these pictures taken from January to December 2021, Gill has focused on “how people in precarity find ways to float, rather than drown”.
Photographer and an author of two books—Acts of Appearance (2022) and Fields of Sight (2023)— Gill has her work displayed in collections of institutions like Museum of Modern Art in New York, London’s Tate Museum and Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
