As Goa changes, author, artist Savia Viegas urges return to memory, women’s voices and cultural roots AT MOG Sunday talk

~ At the MOG Sunday session, artist-writer Savia Viegas traces how forgotten narratives and women’s voices shape Goa’s cultural memory. 

~ From mandos to denim, Viegas calls for reclaiming the region’s stories before they slip into silence. 

Goa Khabar : Goa risks losing its deeper cultural identity if its oral histories and women’s narratives are not actively preserved, artist and writer Savia Viegas said during a recent MOG Sunday session at the Museum of Goa, in Pilerne. 

Viegas, during her talk, emphasised the urgency of reconnecting Goan stories with their historical roots, warning that many traditional forms—such as mandos and dekhnis—have become detached from the episodes that created them.

“If we don’t understand where these stories come from, we start losing the meaning behind them,” Viegas said, noting how migration, shifting social pressures and changing cultural priorities have pushed important histories to the margins.

Viegas explained that much of her work draws from small, everyday details that hold emotional and historical weight. “Life is lived in the small moments,” she said, adding that these fragments often become the foundation for her narratives. She stressed the need for Goans to take pride in their own traditions, pointing out that local practices are frequently overshadowed by external narratives, contributing to a slow erosion of community memory.

Discussing Love Tales, her exhibition that was on display at the Museum of Goa, Savia Viegas described why she embeds desire, intimacy, and longing into embroidered stories on upcycled denim. Denim, she noted, carries both Indian origins and a global cultural presence—making it an ideal material for stories that move between personal history and contemporary identity. The combination of text and image allows her to distill a story into a few hundred words while creating a visual atmosphere that deepens its emotional tone. Some pieces, particularly those involving transgender love or childhood longing, are intentionally subtle, allowing viewers to form their own interpretations.

Viegas also underscored the importance of women telling their own stories, in the course of her talk. Many women, she observed, internalise the belief that their experiences are unimportant. “You are supposed to hide these stories… whispered little details,” she said, recalling how certain women were dismissed for acts that simply asserted their individuality. For her, documenting these voices is both cultural preservation and quiet resistance.

She reflected on how memory, migration and identity shaped her early life in Carmona. “I grew up with very strong women… a great-grandmother who grappled a tiger, a grandmother who fought for her property in the 1930s,” she said. She described how new influences in the 1960s and 70s—from hippies to African families—shifted the cultural rhythm of village life, bringing in “a new kind of energy, new kinds of music, new kinds of stories.”

Viegas also spoke of turning to writing and painting during a turbulent period, and later rediscovering her mother’s unfinished denim quilt during the pandemic. “The quilt began to speak to me as if in my mother’s voice,” she said. Reworking it became a turning point, prompting her to blend craft, memory and narrative in ways that honour women’s stories.

Her talk addressed ongoing debates around identity, land and belonging in Goa, noting widening divides between long-time residents and newer communities. She called for stronger cultural institutions, shared civic spaces and deeper engagement with younger generations.

Sustaining Goa’s cultural landscape, she said, ultimately depends on how its people choose to remember, reinterpret and carry their stories forward.