Trinidad-born, Brooklyn-raised Renluka Maharaj is a raconteuse, anthropologist, photographer, historian, and feminist rolled into one. She embellishes ‘found’ black-and-white photographs of Indians living in colonial-era Trinidad, as well as her own haunting portraits, with digital and acrylic art… The intent? To infuse life into the nameless, disenfranchised, and voiceless men and women who had been imprisoned, as it were, under the colonial gaze. And to do this, Renluka had to go back to her own roots.
A trained photographer, Renluka’s journey of self-discovery began in 2016, while she was in her second year at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. “I wanted to discover my history,” she says. “My parents were no more; I tried to find out where Nani and Nana were from, but oral stories are…
