#KoraliReview - Ember by GMB Akash
“It’s incredible that these children can smile while living lives like this,” remarks a young woman at Gallery 350. “They are so brave. True survivors.”
Her friend echoes the sentiment. For some visitors at least, this exhibition is about what it claims to be: resilience and empathy.
Others have commented on the quality of the photographs themselves – how well they capture the subject, their emotions, their pain. The photographs, taken by GMB Akash, are very polished, even beautiful portraits – sympathetic studies of South Asian and Southeast Asian workers: men, women, and yes children, who lead lives of extraordinary toil.
And yet they smile.
The handpicked sets of photographs come with lengthy captions explaining the material conditions of the work and life of the subjects.
The photographs are not for sale, which is a relief. It would be a crime against civilisation if someone were to profit from the suffering of others. Which is what galleries do anyway, one could argue, but it’s not the case here.
I was also struck by the photographer’s choice to display his personal relationship with Munna, whom Akash first photographed as a little boy some 20 years ago. In the caption, Akash tells us he stayed in touch with the boy’s family and “supported them in different ways, including helping with his [Munna’s] sister’s education.” And he later gave the adult Munna a tuktuk “as a gift, not a loan.” [Emphasis mine].
“For me, these photographs are more than portraits,” he writes in the caption.
So, here is a man displaying his generosity on the gallery wall. Notwithstanding his original intention, this is virtue signalling at its most nauseating. It should have been kept to himself.
That said, what are we to feel when experiencing this collection of photographs? And it is more a collection than a well-curated journey – there is too much and there are some devastating photographs placed almost like afterthoughts above larger frames, well above the line of sight.
One such is the photograph of a young boy; his dark skin cast in an amber glow. His expression goes far beyond his years: it is the despair of a man who has lost all that is good in his life. You could miss it if you’re not careful.
But what is the wider point, you might think. What are we to feel besides sympathy and empathy for these subjects and being uncomfortable about our privilege to walk in and out of these lives? Isn’t that an absentminded stroke of fate? This could easily have been me, you think. Thank God it isn’t. But what else?
The exhibition doesn’t tell us, and Akash makes it a point not to, yet I feel it could benefit from better framing. As is, it’s ‘just’ a collection of stories of suffering, almost ‘pity porn’ without a framework to guide interpretation. Why is it happening? Who is it benefitting besides factory owners? Where do the products go on sale?
As I see it, we are all complicit in this, in the lives of children being forced to work like adults. It is our relentless quest to find the cheapest deal that fuels entire economies based on slave labour.
And it is labour of the worst kind, one that makes cruel demands on a child’s physique and psychology – look at the wrinkled, worn hands of a child in one of the larger portraits at the back. We prop up this hell with our impulses, us tourists in this Eden of second-hand pain. When the gallery visit is over, we return to our humdrum lives, starting perhaps with a cold matcha latte from Meraki next door. It costs most of Munna’s daily earnings.
There are no easy answers to matters of exploitation in the contemporary world when our everyday existence is itself profoundly incriminated. The system ensures this by making us the beneficiaries of other people’s suffering. “We didn’t start the fire,” sang Billy Joel. “It was always burning since the world’s been turning.” And in all our thoughtfulness we are merely doing what we can to keep that flame alive.
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