Discovering how your family was caught up in major historical events...two women from India and Singapore tell Kim Chakanetsa why they started digging into family secrets, how these stories were lost or deliberately forgotten, and the role that gender played.
Aanchal Malhotra's grandparents fled what is now Pakistan in the chaos of Partition in 1947. Until she began to research her book Remnants of Partition: 21 Objects from a Continent Divided, she never knew their traumatic migration stories. They had buried them deep. Aanchal managed to persuade her grandmothers to reveal their secrets using the few objects they managed to bring with them. Aanchal is an artist and oral historian.
Sim Chi Yin's grandfather was caught up in two different conflicts, the Malayan Emergency and then the Chinese Civil War. He was executed by nationalists in China in 1949. When Chi Yin discovered this history, taboo in her family for decades, it became the starting point for her photographic project One Day We'll Understand. She has since gone on to gather oral histories from the remaining leftist rebels of the Malayan conflict. Chi Yin is a photographic artist and nominee member of Magnum Photos.
L Sim Chi Yin (credit: Keyyes.com/Joel Low) R Aanchal Malhotra (credit: Aashna Malhotra)