The toys of the tiny and the old (June 2022 - ongoing)
Distanced from the children and families in India, I have been making imitations and iterations of objects, toys and dolls accidentally or deliberately captured in their photographs to re-establish contact with these memories. Even while being in live interaction with someone like my eighty year neighbor in College Station, Texas, I painted and sewed imitations of her ceramic dolls, her plush bunnies and pandas, the crochet blanket hand stitched by her mother and other items of her home ; seeing if these objects could communicate my experience of her story, her amnesia, loss of home, isolation and loneliness.
The patterns I lick and smell (October 2022 - ongoing)
Daily Rituals
I let you lie on my right palm and can never fight the temptation to quickly squeeze your trunk with the other. And as soon as I have palpated you, I cannot escape lifting that fabric of balmy flowers and buds to gaze at your belly thats squished (yet retaining its firmness) between your round voluptuous thighs. The circular lining of your frock is hardened at the junction of the tender lace and the loosely hanging cloth. But since I hold the hard lining between my thumb and index finger, I don’t feel it's stiffness. It's in complete contrast to the very squashy lace and the very tender fabric. My eyes are caught up like an ever-revolving marble in the maze of this oblong cylinder tummy stuffed tautly in the cloth whose patterns I can almost smell and lick.
Practice and People in Lucknow (January 2021- ongoing)
December 2020 till November 2021, during my stay in Lucknow, I took up a rigorous on-location drawing and painting practice. This practice of treatment of paint is a step back from the conceptually and materialistically realized projects of the previous years spent in the Netherlands. This is also a step forward towards exposing and confronting the reality of my own drawing and painterly skills. Within these exercises, I visited hospitals, temples, neighbouring localities and painted children, mothers and others at these locations. I also investigated Egon Schiele’s method of treating aquarelle and gouache, recreated Honore Daumier’s grim sculptures and studied tree barks and leaves.
Kittu (May- June 2021)
Drawings done to mark my witnessing of my sister’s baby’s birth and the period thereafter. Kittu was named so, a few months before he was born. As a temporary nurse for the mother and the baby, I snatched several moments during my duty-shifts to know the forms of a newborn- its
Onno Mama Wange (February 2019- June 2020)
My graduation project, Onno Mama Wange translates as "this is my mother". A Ugandan baby girl of three, Shami spoke these words for me, treating me as the center of her trust.
This animation traces my experience with two children at St. Paul Rehab Centre of Kyampisi Childcare Ministries, Uganda, and depicts my feelings when my project was assigned a different meaning after coming back to my academy in the Netherlands. The animation raises questions on 'identity politics' as a lens to see emotional experiences.
My Stories of Uganda (February- July 2019)
Drawings done within my five-month long volunteering and artistic research at Kyampisi Childcare Ministries,Uganda. I take drawing as a tool to perceive the happenings around me, the emotions involved in mine and children’s interaction, their individual experiences, the community people at KCM at different times of the day, and families of nearby villages.
Herenplaats (2018-2019)
I found out a little about the unseen world of the artists working at the gallery-studio Herenplaats, Rotterdam. Here, I had close encounters with people from different psychological and psychotic backgrounds.
Feijenoord
A book published as the eleventh edition of the magazine L’Intolerant series of Woodstone Kugelblitz. The book is based on the seven initial interviews I took of people residing in the Feijenoord locality of Rotterdam. The interviews brought insights into the socio-psychological experiences related to migration- identity crisis, loneliness, gentrification, red lining and xenophobia. The book is a filtered visual+verbal summary of these interviews, created through techniques like stencil printing, riso printing, typewriting and linocut. The book informs about the larger Dutch societal issues through the method of personal storytelling.
Leger des Heils
A handmade book consisting of portraits and narratives of people sheltering at the Leger des Heils (The Salvation Army) South Rotterdam Branch. The portraits were originally painted on grey colored handmade papers, prepared from the fibre pulp of clothes donated for the shelter. The portraits and their surfaces thus already, without words even, become inlaid with stories of trauma, displacement, and loneliness from situations of war exodus, outcasting, bereavement, separation and torture. Later, these faces, including mine, were printed together with my notes on self made cotton papers, and sewn into a book.