Howling Winds – Vasantha Yogananthan

Howling Winds is the fifth chapter of Vasantha Yogananthan’s long-term project A Myth of Two Souls, which offers a contemporary retelling of The Ramayana. A seven-chapter tale first recorded by the Sanskrit poet Valmiki around 300 BC, The Ramayana is one of the founding epics of Hindu mythology and has been continuously rewritten and reinterpreted through time.

Since 2013, Yogananthan has been traveling from north to south India to Sri Lanka, retracing the steps of the epic’s heroes. Between fiction and reality, he deliberately blurs the lines through multiple aesthetic approaches.

At the end of Chapter 4, the wicked Ravana abducts Princess Sita. While Rama is in great distress, hundreds of thousands of animals from all around the world gather to search for Sita. They know that on the far shore of the ocean is the bright and shining island of Lanka, where Ravana is living.

Shot along the coastlines of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, Howling Winds mixes classic color photographs with acrylic hand-painted photographs to echo a world of magic. This French / English language book has a soft cover with silkscreen image and spiral binding. It is 24.5 x 30 cm and 76 pages. It was created with the support of the Centre National des Arts Plastiques’s publishing grant.

See all chapters of A Myth of Two Souls:  1  |  2  |  3  |  4  |  5  |  6  |  7

Artist / Author

Chose Commune is an independent publishing house based in Marseille, France, which curates, edits, and produces artists books with a focus on photography and works on paper. Chose Commune is directed by Cécile Poimboeuf-Koizumi, co-founder with Vasantha Yogananthan. Vasantha Yogananthan made the images for Howling Winds and Arshia Sattar wrote the text. Graphic design is by Kummer&Herrman. Find more on Yogananthan‘s artistic practice on PhotoSouthAsia.

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