Books take you places, but what if you took books to places? Not just as an ideal travelling companion, but more as a way to connect with the place and its people.
Building connections is at the core of Sister Library, and that is why indigenous artist Aqui Thami conceptualised it as a travelling library that is also an evolving work of art.
“Travelling, because accessibility is important,” says the 32-year-old PhD candidate at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. “And, I wanted to present a collected curation of printed material for every city we travelled to that responds to its locality. This display takes the form of an experimental reading and reflecting room.”
The library lived out of suitcases for a year or so before finding a stationary home in Bandra in 2019. And, while it may still be a man’s world out there, inside the bubble-gum pink walls of Sister Library, women and their work rule. As Thami says, it celebrates female excellence, making it the first travelling, feminist library in South Asia.
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The idea to start a library came to her while reading; reading women in particular. Thami started reading women exclusively as a practice seven years ago. “I started thinking of building a library of the books I was collecting,” she says. “The feeling grew stronger when I started to share these books with my friends. And, I started thinking about libraries, how I experience them, what do these spaces stand for, and conceptualised this art piece that contests these ideologies and presents a new way of experiencing a library.”
The library has travelled to seven cities in India, and to Kathmandu, Dhaka and Auckland. And, with each trip, works from the city, most of them independently published by women in the local language, became a part of the library. “The library is a living installation,” says Thami, “and it changes with every interaction and every journey.”
Most of the books are from Thami’s personal collection, some have come from friends and feminists. Writer Jerry Pinto contributed Rs10,000 to the library. And, more contributions are welcome, as it is a community-owned library with a monthly membership fee of Rs500.
Thami sees the library as a space of joy and healing in the community. And so, there is more to it than just reading. Apart from a book club, there is a monthly feminist movie night, a feminist newspaper hot from its own press and open-access sessions where women are taught about printing.
Sister Library has a butterfly’s soul though, and is itching to travel. Next destination: northeastern India, pandemic permitting.