Auto De Fé: The Sea is History by Kedar Dhondu

Title: Auto De Fé : The Sea is History
Artist: Kedar Dhondu
Medium: Water Colour and Gouache on Paper.
Size: 240 inches x 80 inches (Eight Panels of 60" X 40" each)


‘Auto De Fé: The Sea is History’ / 2016
Video and Sound Installation
32 Sec (loop)

‘Auto De Fé: The Sea is History’ explores my overarching interest in light, history and time. The work looks at the migration through the lens of religious persecution and colonial hegemony. In Auto De Fé, ocean plays an important role. It is symbolized as an intermediate zone between the past and the present, the particular and the general, the local and the global. Here I am interested to showcase the societal topics it addresses, from migration to social and economic disenfranchisement and suppression, and religious violence that highlights Goa’s history.

The Portuguese conquest of Goa in 1510 and its subsequent rule by Portugal resulted in a large-scale conversion of Goa’s indigenous population to Christianity. The state of Goa then became the centre of Christianization in the East. After conversion, locals were usually granted Portuguese citizenship. The rapid rise of converts in Goa has been described as mostly the result of Portuguese economic and political control over the Hindus.

In 1560, the ‘Inquisition’ was established in Goa. It involved persecution of Hindus as well as Christians. It was used as instrument of social control, as well as method of confiscating victim’s property and enriching the Inquisitors. The main aim was to preserve Catholic faith in Goa. Thousands and thousands of ‘heretics’ were burned, tortured and executed. Finally it got abolished in 1812. From 1560 to 1774, the tribunals of the Inquisition tried more than 15,000 persons. Seventy-one autos de fé were recorded. In 1567 and in 1583, the campaign of destroying temples in Goa (Bardez, Asolna and Cuncolim) met with success. At the end of it, more than 300 Hindu temples were destroyed.

In Goa’s past, the Portuguese treated ‘black image’ with oppression, alienation, emasculation and abuse. Thus in my work, the converted dark heads of the local Hindu Deities of present time temples of Goa, are rendered with similar ‘darkness’ of the destroyed basalt stone Hindu Temples and deities of Goa’s history. (Idols, which are originally, Gold, silver and other metals called as Panchadhatu gets converted). The darkened heads of Gods and Godesses hovers over the undulating movement of waves of the ocean creates an intensely meditative, almost therapeutic atmosphere in ‘Auto De Fé’. Thus the images of Gods signify the Hindu practice of replicating manifestations of a deity in order to achieve spiritual merit.

Kedar Dhondu