I am an Indian artist that manipulates fabric and thread to create interactive installations. I explore concepts of womanhood and nostalgia through the generosity and connectedness of fabric, often taking inspiration from my relationship with my mother and my cultural inheritance. My work expresses the spectrum of connection and disconnection I experience being a part of Indian society, taking the form of ambiguous critique that personifies the duality of this structure. My practice is a fragmented archive of motifs and symbols such as tea stains, saris and moli, the thread of protection, that in their recurrence inform and build from each other. These motifs, although embodying their cultural histories, are specific and familiar to my experience, creating an overlay in their meaning.
I wrestle and transform the fabric to create formative gestures, weavings, and bound structures. The tools I use to create my artwork often have cultural symbolism originating from events and daily rituals from my community, family, and society. The colors in my work are highly intentional, conceptual, and often hand dyed. They are derived from natural interaction such as tea stains or turmeric dye as this submerges the work in a cultural language. The gestures often present themselves in warmer colors such as golden yellow and reds that embody a sense of home and community for me.
The installations I create using these symbols stress the need for acknowledgment of familiar interactions while elevating their value and emphasizing their significance, similar to the emotional effort and domestic labor that women partake in that goes unnoticed and undervalued. The interactive nature of my work welcomes the viewer to activate and lend to its history and creation. This interaction elicits a sensory and conceptual response where the viewer, in turn, becomes part of the journey of the work by being enveloped by it, and by its emotionality.