Vashish Soobah

 

His video, photographic, performative, and sound work explores the root causes and inherent social mechanisms of African migrations in a global context, with a particular focus on their implications in Western societies.

His artistic projects also stem from a personal need to engage with precision and complexity with his own positioning as a Mauritian diasporic subject in Italy—that is, as a brown (and thus not Black) Afro-descendant with genealogical roots in Southeast Asia.

Through his first documentary, Nanì, made in Mauritius, Soobah began investigating his family’s history through the eyes of his grandmother. A witness to various political and economic events in the country (such as the post-colonial transition and the expansion of sugar cane plantations), she broadly outlines the specific nature of the Mauritian heritage.

Following a matrilineal path, Soobah also grants an important role in his research to his mother, who is his point of reference in the rediscovery and preservation, as a diasporic subject, of Mauritian traditions and spirituality.

The theme of spirituality is indeed a recurring element in Soobah’s practice. In various works, he has portrayed the Mauritian diasporic community—particularly in Milan—in both intimate moments and public acts of prayer and collective ritual.

Another central element of his practice is his interest in water, which Soobah associates with the movement of the diaspora. Filming water brings him back to a more spiritual dimension, linked to the image of the sea which, in Hindu culture, represents a deity.