My research interests lie at the intersection of political culture, democracy, and economics. As a photographer, I also actively engage with visual media—mainly photography—as a research tool. Below are some of my ongoing projects that span these subjects and methods.
Live Act: Human Zoos in picture postcards of early 20th century France
This project is explores picture postcards printed during the Human Exhibitions in France as sources of material history, in order to explore hitherto unexplored forms of violence of colonialism as documented both in photographs but also souvenirs and means of communication. Studying these two visual cultural forms simultaneously, I will use postcards as a medium to better understand the exhibitions and its audiences specifically and the nature of colonial violence more broadly. Postcards enrich our understanding of history by adding a layer of complexity to the (purely) visual medium of photography through actively engaging the sender and receiver of the cards who use it (also) as a mode of communication.
A quick study of some postcards printed during a colonial exhibition in 1902 in Paris reveal interesting facets of colonialism and visual culture that require scholarly attention. For instance, a popular installation at the Jardin d’Acclimatation (The Garden of Acclimatisation) in Paris was titled “Les Malabares” or The Malabaris. The name suggested that the exhibition housed the people and cultures of Malabar, the region along the western coast of the Indian subcontinent. Little work has been done on the identities, lives and violence meted out on these “exhibits”—displayed for a European audience in a European land, creating two levels of violence first of agency and then of space. One of the picture postcards published from this exhibition showed four bayadères (temple dancers), posing for the camera. Another shows some acrobats including children arched upon long bamboo poles, with a group of men and women seen standing next to the bamboo artists. Emerging evidence from similar exhibitions in other countries suggests that any descriptions of these exhibitions as being authentic depictions of life in the colonies are questionable. Moreover, in focusing on the postcards printed specifically during the colonial exhibitions, this research emphasizes a second level of violence that the photographed individuals were subjected to; they were both victims of the colonial gaze of photography that is now well-researched, but also of the physicality of being displaced from their homeland, to an alien landscape thousands of kilometres away where they were being exhibited. Colonial subjects photographed in Europe, in other words, were different from those photographed in the colonies, in that there was an added level of violence in their physical displacement.
“Deliver”
(S. Harikrishnan and Paul O' Neill, 2023 - )
Deliver is an ongoing project with Paul O’ Neill focusing on food delivery workers in Dublin within the context of digital culture and platform capitalism. We first exhibited this work at the Beta festival in November 2023. Through a series of photographs and ethnography, we document the social spaces created and occupied by delivery workers in Dublin’s city centre and contrast them with areas of the city where some of the most dominant tech companies of our networked era are based. Through this, the aim is to document the inequalities between the gig workers and the tech infrastructure in Dublin City. We are interested in mapping the economic, political and spatial inequalities that sustain the platform economy and the changes the industry has made to urban landscapes.
(This project was supported by the DCU Arts and Culture Grant 2023-24)
At Home In Ireland
At Home In Ireland is a project that brings light to everyday migrant lives and spaces in Ireland. It will include an audio-visual documentation of experiences in and of migrants within the private space of their homes. In what everyday material objects does Irishness reflect in the homes of migrant communities in Ireland? What artefacts, practices or oral narratives do migrants in Ireland have as tangible forms of cultural integration? These are some of the questions I will attempt to engage with through this project. It will include primarily photographs of migrant homes but will be open to audio recordings, written submissions from migrants, and other forms of cultural expression that may be suitable and relevant to curate. Together, the idea is that the exhibition will shine a light on the experiences of integration among migrants in Ireland.
(This project is supported by DCU School of Law and Government’s Creative Outputs Scheme 2024-25)