INDIAN MANGOES by the SEA
3 channel video and text, 2017
In Indian Mango by the Red Sea the mango represents a traded fruit, a diplomatic vessel, and it functions as a symbolic surrogate for the Hajj pilgrims that arrive at the port of the Red Sea. The video is shot in 3 different locations by the port, which allows the viewer to negotiate the contradictory proximities presented to them. The places pictured in the video include a crumbling historic neighborhood established in the 7th century, the polluted port, and a new cement fountain borrowing its form from generic orientalist designs and standing as a symbol of modernization and greening of the desert of Arabia.
Three burqa clad women eat the Indian Mango in public in the manner of the South Asian pilgrims--by softening the mango in their palms and sucking at the liquified mango flesh. In the in the birthplace of Islam, the women perform a secular ritual of eating the mango, and they function as purveyors and teachers of indigenous knowledge about the fruit.
