A multidimensional public art exhibition currently on in the small rural town of Ashburton near Christchurch has detailed experiences of few Indian migrants of “integrating into a new community and creating a sense of belonging while negotiating their own identities in different communities”.
Titled Crossing the bridge, and bringing together photography, film and individual narratives, the exhibition is the brainchild of Anthropologist Sophie-Claire Violette, who is originally from Mauritius. With help from photographer Petra Mingneau, videographer Vanesa Paredes and producer Lucy Holland, Sophie took almost eight months to develop the project and believes that the sharing of migrant experiences “will encourage people to step out of their comfort zones and start talking to each other so that strangers can become familiar and eventually friends”.
One of the migrants featured in the exhibition is Amninder Kaur, who came to Auckland from Punjab in 2013. Her experiences, as detailed in the exhibition, was the familiar story of difficulty in finding any job in Auckland, and when she did, it was often poorly paid labour that relied on migrants’ willingness to compromise. Later, she moved to Ashburton and got married to Amrit Singh, a young Sikh man. Now settled, Amninder thinks “that it is important for ‘everyone’ to learn about the cultures and values of people around them because it is our cultural and religious differences that will help us grow as a community”.
Amrit, too, has experienced prejudice in Ashburton, as people confuse him for being a Muslim, but as detailed in the exhibition “this injustice was counteracted by a positive action”. Narrating the incident, Amrit told that an older man who was walking past and heard the abuse being thrown at him, came up to him and apologised on behalf of the people who had yelled at him. This is what Amrit chooses to focus on. He prefers to uphold the positivity that underlies the Sikh religion and his life. His message is simple, “Don’t hate,” noted the exhibition organisers.