Fireflies
Fireflies is a multi-layered body of work including photography, moving image, and performance. Fireflies covers many complex narratives around eco-feminism and gender justice, with grounded ideas of magical realism and science fiction.
Alona Pardo, curator of The Barbican, introduces Basu’s work: “Fireflies, consists of a series of deeply emotive and powerful images of Poulomi invariably performing for the camera”. The project consists of images that Poulomi Basu intertwined with her mother, underscoring a matrilineal heritage and genealogy that speaks to the violence which is all too often bestowed on women’s bodies, highlighting female oppression and the hetero-patriarchal cultural values that are also a shared trauma, and notions of care.
Kenneth Dickerman, The Washington Post: “Basu’s work seeks to turn that paradigm on its head to begin to create a more equitable, favorable and stable world for all”.
Shyama Laxman, Aesthetica Magazine: despite the hard-hitting subject matter, Fireflies is not unsettling, rather, mesmerising. Whilst bruises and blood are subtly weaved into the show, these pockets of brutality are offset by a pervading sense of hope that women will break the cycle of abuse and forge a better world for themselves.