MUMBAI.- Desmond Lazaro was born into an Anglo Indian family in Leeds, England. His parents on the other hand migrated from Burma to Leeds in 1957 and Lazaro's great-grandfather hailed from Madras in the 1800s. When Desmond moved to India to do his MFA at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Baroda, he never really went back to England, and now lives with his family in Pondicherry, in the very state of Tamil Nadu where his ancestors originated.

Living in India meant that he had to avail of a PIO card. In order to do that, he had to prove that he had traces of being ‘Indian’, which meant that Desmond needed to trace his ancestry. Once again a long and arduous search lead him to discover baptism certificates of his great-grand parents, in a tiny cupboard of church records at the St Mary’s Catholic Church, Armenian Street, Chennai.

With this unique personal migratory history and complex journey, the new exhibition, Incoming Passengers at Chemould Prescott Road traces these stories through drawings, texts and a film, bringing in the narrative of immigrant families negotiating a home amidst imaginary homelands and the ripple effect of these movements, on generations to follow.

Lazaro’s great-grandfather lived in Madras during the 1800s, and this where the story comes full circle. At St. Mary's Catholic Church office in Chennai where Lazaro spent days and months delving through books the search finally ending with the finding of Baptism dates of his great-grand father. The visceral connection of finally finding one’s roots that connects you to a place and it's people, was to Lazaro "overwhelming!" The result of this search is a work called Baptism Certificate, rendered in an exquisite gesso script much like the original stained, printed, scratched-marked books that some unknown scribe (clerk) would have written all those many years ago.

Lazaro's grandparents and parents migrated from Burma to Leeds in the 1950s and 60s on the S.S. Salween whilst Crossing the Med, which took the Suez-Mediterranean route The passengers depicted in this painting are much like refugees that have become commonplace in the Mediterranean today that are caught between a world they leave behind and the world they seek. ‘Crossing the Ganga’ by Manaku (an 18th Century Miniaturist from Jammu) where an entire kingdom attempts to cross the river Ganges while their city is ablaze on the nearby shoreline, forms the understudy for this painting where real figures replace mythological ones in this allegory of imagined homelands.

Cini Film brings together Lazaro’s family memories, which were captured in small Polaroid format paintings gleaned from 8mm home movies’ camera that his father used. Like all celluloid, these photos are slightly tarnished, out of focus, double exposed, became the source for documenting and re-visiting how his family "settled in England". It showcased how negotiating the imaginary homeland on a daily basis, would have been the reality for many families of the commonwealth that migrated Westward during this time.

In I.D.Hiranyagarbha (The Cosmic Egg), Lazaro again beautifully welds mythological murmurings of a text from the Sanskrit Poem Maharasa Lila Krishna’s Great Circular Dance, echoing the geometry of a Sacred Pichhavai painting, with the fingerprint as a modern marker of personal identity.

The exhibition weaves these personal stories and the effects of migration on the Lazaro family today. The strong presence of his skill of the Pichhavai paintings continues to be present through the miniature paintings, through his use of the traditional pigment paint and Sanganeer paper - all of which is hand-made by the artist and his studio assistant.

Desmond Lazaro (b. 1968) Leeds, United Kingdom

He has held solo exhibitions at galleries such as Gallery Chemould / Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai, India; Beck and Eggeling, Dusseldorf, Germany; Ben Brown Fine Arts, London, United Kingdom

Selected participations include, Pichhvai Painting, Royal Commonwealth Society, London, British High Commission, New Delhi, 2000; Museum of Asiatic, Nice, 2003; Materials and techniques of pigment painting, Mseum Rietberg, Zurich, 2004; Arte Fiera, Bologna, 2010; Aesthetic Bind: Floating World, Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai, 2014; The Gates of the Lord, Art Institute of Chicago, 2015-2016.

The artist lives and works in Pondicherry