The Arrival of Vasco da Gama

(after an 1898 oil painting by Jose Veloso Salgado)

Archival inkjet print on canvas, size : 56″ x 84 ” , Edition of 10 , Bangalore 2014

Installation with painted backdrops, props, blackboard, wooden desk, globe, texts and process photographs, painted red walls with wood panelling.

Commissioned by the Kochi Muziris Biennale 2014.

For The Arrival of Vasco da Gama Pushpamala plays her first male role as the celebrated navigator, recreating the original painting as a photographic tableau with artist friends as supporting cast. Elements of the painted sets made for the shoot and written texts form an installation like a theatre museum around the photograph, unpeeling the work. The artist turns Salgado’s conception on its head, returning what is a work of imagination that has over time gained a degree of historical legitimacy, to the space of fiction and masquerade.

Concept, production design and direction:  Pushpamala N.
Photography: Clay Kelton
Sets:  painted by Bharathesh GD with Gururaj H S and Vineesh Amin
Make up: N K Ramakrishna
Production assistant: Babitha Lingraj
Cast:  Pushpamala N, Umesh Maddanahalli, Sudhindra Seshadri, G Mahesh, Vineesh Amin, Gururaj H S, Mohammad Rizvan, Amaresh Bijjal, Shamsunder, Amshu Chukki, Pradeep Kambathalli, Harshavardhana, Vinay Kumar
Shot in Arun Cine Services Studio, Bangalore