New Delhi:
A controversy erupted on Thursday after visual artist Raihan Vadra, son of Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra after the Bikaner House administration asked him to remove 70 photographs documenting recent protests in Delhi from his solo exhibition just hours before its scheduled opening.
Speaking to The Daily Guardian, Raihan, who is also the son of businessman Robert Vadra said, “Yesterday, my show was supposed to open at 7 pm. The show was titled ‘No Idea is Fine’. 24 hours before it was to open, I was first approached by the Bikaner House management and told that some of the images are against their policy.”
A surprised Raihan said that he also asked the Bikaner Hohse Administration to let him know and “let’s have a discussion”.
He said that the Administration informed him that they need to remove “all the images, which were street photography images of the youth movements in Delhi over the last year”.
“I said, ‘I shared the layout a week earlier; why didn’t you bring it up earlier?’ To which they responded that ‘we couldn’t see the layout.’ So I said, ‘You still had 1 week to tell me you couldn’t see the layout. I would have sent it; we could have had the discussion earlier. Now, in 4-5 hours, what am I going to do?’ I asked them to give it to me in writing as to why they are removing these photographs, individual reasons; they didn’t. Then at 3 pm, senior managemeht people came, and said the same thing. I also said the same thing to him.
He said that they said ‘Your policy says political content’.
He maintained that for the most part, I had removed imagery of political parties and of political leaders.
He said that the Bikaner House administration said that no, none of these 70 images will be put up and they sent me a notice at 3.30 saying, ‘If you don’t remove it by 5 PM, the building is sealed, and the exhibition is canceled.’
“Then we complied. We flipped the photographs. So you could only see the back of the frame. They had a problem with that. We took those down, piled them up on the side. They had a problem with that. We put them in storage. I left two photos of the Indian flag, and they said, ‘Take it down.’ I said, ‘This can’t be against your policy. How can it be against your policy?’ I said, ‘Give it to me in writing that you want me to take down a picture of the Indian flag.’ They didn’t. So those were there, and then I went home to change. They took one down themselves. So one is remaining, if you had seen it.”
Raihan said he plans to show the full collection elsewhere and he is still searching for a space.
Meanwhile, Priyanka Gandhi also came out in support of her son and in a post on X said, “When someone with power becomes afraid of the expression of another, he doesn’t know it, but he has already lost the very power he is trying to protect.
“You stand for what is true and everything beautiful will find its way to you. I am proud of you, always will be,” the Wayanad MP said.
Meanwhile, in a press statement on Thursday, the Bikaner House Management Society described itself as a public cultural institution dedicated to promoting art and culture, whose exhibitions “must comply” with its policy.
The statement further read, “Certain photographs displayed as part of Raihan Vadra’s exhibition were found to be inconsistent with the policy of the Bikaner House Management Society. Accordingly, their removal was requested. The photographs that are consistent with the Society’s policy have been continued to be displayed.”
The show, open until October 25, is smaller than the one Raihan had planned, but far from empty.
The surviving works span wildlife, abstraction, and some photographs from the protests.
The exhibition is divided into four segments — Breathe, Move, Listen, Speak.
The section Breathe shows wildlife photographs, including a tiger sitting on a branch, hidden behind twigs, looking into the camera. While the larger part of the Move section of the exhibition was from the protest, some of the photographs that remain are from concerts.