Book presentation and collaborative performance
by Sarojini Lewis and Preeti Singh
Friday 20 February 2026
At the FICA Reading Room, New Delhi
5.30 pm
In this talk, artist, curator and researcher Sarojini Lewis will share insights from her publication A Shift of Identity that investigates the works of contemporary Bhojpuri (North Indian) artists from the diaspora in Mauritius, Suriname and Guyana and the way they explore their complex identities and heritage through their art. She draws parallels between archival photographic material from an earlier generation of Bhojpuri migrants.
6:30 pm
Chiraiya Ke Boli (The Bird’s Song) is a collaborative art performance installation co-created by Sarojini Lewis and Preeti Singh. The 45-minute immersive experience explores women's perspectives on separation and migration through live songs, spoken words, visual installations with layered projections. Drawing from Bhojpuri folk songs along with spoken words, and installation of photographs and images in the space, the work reclaims symbols traditionally associated with women.
Together, they explore how separation is experienced differently but remembered similarly, whether through migration across borders or emotional and cultural distance from home. Moving between Bhojpuri, Hindi, and English & Dutch, the performance creates a dialogue between those who stayed, those who left and those who live in-between. Using voice, song, and minimal movement to trace how women carry home, loss, and belonging across distances.
About the facilitators:
Sarojini Lewis (India/Sur/Netherlands) has a background in Fine Art (MFA Fine Art Edinburgh University) with a specialization in archival photography, video art and book arts. She is currently working as a curator, researcher and artist. Her PhD in visual studies in JNU examined the indentured labour archive through a feminine contemporary lens. In her artistic practice, she explores diaspora identity, landscape memory and cultural displacement.
Preeti Singh is a Delhi-based artist whose practice is shaped by close attention to lived experience and the social structures that frame it. Working across painting, installation, moving image, and participatory formats, she engages broader questions of creative process, situating emotional landscapes within the politics of memory, power, identity, and belonging.