Working across paper weaving, photography, performance,
installation, and video, my practice conceptualizes the body as
a "memory collector", a repository of lived experience and a
site for post-memorial reconstruction. Born into a family
shaped by the trauma of displacement during the 1947
Partition of India, I explore the intricate relationship between
contemporary life and inherited trauma. I navigate this terrain
through intergenerational memories, family archives, and the
elusive quest for home.
My performance practice serves as the foundation for all my
work, whether as a standalone medium or the conceptual base
for my weavings and videos. I utilize paper weaving as a
metaphorical process, intertwining the warp of past with the
weft of the present and vice versa to interrogate identity. The
resulting visual language, fragmented, pixelated, and obscured,
serves as a metaphor for lost narratives.
Core of my practice lies on the exploration of personal histories
often overshadowed by institutional narratives. Preserved within
my family's archive since the partition and their migratory
journey are poems, photographs, documents, letters, telegrams,
postcards, oral histories, and travelogues by my grandparents
and parents. Through staged photography and mise-en-scène, I
seek to decolonize these memories, reshaping their narratives
and reclaiming agency over our collective history.
Video courtesy India Art Fair