I Carry You Within Me
2025
60” x 60”
Sari Fabric, Moli (thread of protection), Tea Dye, Thread, Wooden Dowel
I Carry You Within Me explores generational ties between women through the symbolic use of saris. More than garments, saris are heirlooms that carry history, memory, and resilience. This project also draws from the biological reality that women are born with all the eggs they will ever have, meaning I once existed as an egg within my mother while she was still inside my grandmother. This profound connection, deepened by my grandmother’s recent passing, highlights how inheritance extends beyond material wealth to culture, identity, and the very fabric of our existence.
2021
36 in (diameter)
Materials: Turmeric and tea dyed fabric, saree fabric, Moli (thread of protection), Wood Backing
‘Braided’ incorporates significant moments of pause and growth in my artistic journey through the meticulously braided remnants of my previous work. In this repetitive process, I nurture and care for my practice just as my mother nourished the growth of my hair as her mother did for her.
I use braided forms, sari fabric, tea and turmeric stains, and moli thread to reflect on the ways cultural identity is inherited through gesture, ritual, and memory. I am interested in how materials can carry traces of lived experience, particularly within the domestic sphere, where acts of care and repetition become embedded into one’s understanding of self.
The act of braiding references intergenerational connections between women, gestures of grooming, nurturing, and preservation that are often intimate yet deeply formative. The stained fabrics hold the marks of everyday rituals and use, allowing the work to exist as both personal archive and material memory. Through these inherited textiles and processes, I explore cultural inheritance not as something fixed, but as something continuously shaped through touch, labor, and familial connection.
2020
Dimensions Variable (96 x 120 in)
Materials: Acrylic on canvas, sari fabric, jute rope
The life of a ‘sari’ owned by a woman in India can be traced back generations, thus becoming a representation of culture, history, and family. The fabric connects daughter to mother and symbolizes the strength that we as women receive from the experience and life’s work of our mothers.
The installation acts as a juxtaposition of my history with the fabrics on top and my understanding of my culture through the abstract representation below, reclaiming the color pink and the feminine strength associated with it.
Through ‘Inheritance’, I claim the fierce history connecting generations, that my mother so generously passes on to me.
2019-2020
Dimensions Variable (120 x 120 in)
Materials: Turmeric and tea dyed cotton and linen, moli (thread of protection), jute rope, tea-set
‘Chai’ or tea in India brings people together in a transcending way. People spend time connecting over a cup of tea with family, friends and strangers across societal divides.
Chai Pe Charcha is a visual representation of elements of my community. It holds the essence of warmth as the viewer walks through the space, inviting them in to take part in its history. The marks are accentuated by small details to bring forth the idea of wearing stains and communal imperfections proudly. The taut clothes lines here represent the constant push and pull of existing in a social structure where disagreements are part of the daily ritual and thread of life. The interactive tea set holds the essence of the people that sat around the table before and that will come after, becoming part of the very thread of the piece.
2019-2020
Dimensions Variable (120 x 120 in)
Materials: Turmeric and tea dyed cotton and linen, moli (thread of protection), jute rope, tea-set
‘Chai’ or tea in India brings people together in a transcending way. People spend time connecting over a cup of tea with family, friends and strangers across societal divides.
Chai Pe Charcha is a visual representation of elements of my community. It holds the essence of warmth as the viewer walks through the space, inviting them in to take part in its history. The marks are accentuated by small details to bring forth the idea of wearing stains and communal imperfections proudly. The taut clothes lines here represent the constant push and pull of existing in a social structure where disagreements are part of the daily ritual and thread of life. The interactive tea set holds the essence of the people that sat around the table before and that will come after, becoming part of the very thread of the piece.
2019
Installation Dimensions Variable (60 x 84 in)
Materials: Turmeric and tea dyed cotton and linen, moli (thread of protection), jute rope
‘Daag Ache Hai’ gives a physicality to the simple moment of drinking tea. The integral nature of each individual thread to the weaving mimics the ritualistic and transcending nature of drinking tea in the Indian community.
This weaving hung on a clothesline unabashedly bears the stains for everyone to see. The piece holds the essence of people through the marks they leave behind, lending to the ambiguous nature of society and community. In this ambiguity, the audience is left to construct complex relationships and emotional connections with this community.
2018
24 x 30 in (each)
Materials: Sari fabric, text, yarn and jute rope
‘Unravel’ embodies and weaves together the stories of 24 Indian women with text and sari while exploring the delicate balance of creation and destruction. In pulling the text from the weave, the audience is challenged to explore the idea of what it means to hold the essence of these fierce women in your hands.
The installation of the familiar forms in white cube gallery is meant to elevate the value of the trivial and unseen.
2018
2880 in fabric
Materials: Hand-dyed cotton fabric and rope
The suspended fabric is the visualization of nostalgia and a sense of home. A moment in time extracted and placed in the room to share with the viewer, hung in abstraction like a silhouette above the audience as in my mind. The streaming yellow hues form sunlit warmth and offer protection to the audience within. Subtle movements in the fabric highlight the transient nature of memory and emotions. Though many aspects of the moment are absent and forgotten, the surreal interaction with the soft landscape grounds its significance.
2018
42 x 84 in
Materials: Oil paint, thread, nature stencils, concrete paste and fabric on canvas
‘A Little Bit of Chaos, for Now’ stems from the remnants of ‘Passage’ as a deconstruction of the message into its dissonance. Once a flowing network capturing the history that nature embodies, the familiar materials here mash on canvas in a raw display of the struggles of the human mind and of the disconnect often felt between emotion and ideology.
2018
Dimension:
35 Yards of fabric
Materials:
Cotton cloth, fabric dye
Description:
The stitching and overlapping of the dyed fabric is a representation of the layers of memory and emotion. The shadows highlighting the different shades a memory holds within itself.
The meditative process of creating the installation is meant to be a therapeutic experience for the artist as well as the viewer. The fragments of the pleated structures representing the fragments of time waiting to be unfolded.
2018
90 x 102 in
Materials: Sari fabric, wood, wire, block print, text, and paper
‘Unfolding’ embodies the spirit of 24 Indian women who have inspired me.
As a symbol of beauty against murky waters, lotuses are resilient and central in spite of the imperfect world around them. Each lotus, an ambiguous characterization of these women, is constructed with sari fabric, an Indian woman's most prized possession charged with memory and love in transcendental form to take on the spirit of its wearer. Installed as a community, the individual lotus provides reflection and knowledge to the whole.
Accompanying the installation, a book includes the cumulative descriptions of each of the women being characterized. The descriptions celebrate both the accomplishments that they considered too trivial to share as well as those they found meaningful due to historical societal perceptions.
2018
Dimension:
5 Feet Installation
Materials:
‘Saree’ fabric (Indian traditional garb), rope, wire, and rice
Description:
The fragile structure created using the repetitive tying of rope and fabric acts as a sieve for the grain fallen on the ground.
The piece is a representation of the class divide that causes uneven distribution of food and value among people that belong to the same place and culture.
2018
Dimension variable
Materials: Sari fabric, yarn and nature intervention
Serving as an intervention in nature, ‘Passage’ is an interactive installation marking the flow of time and space. The threads, binding and connecting the environment, represent a peaceful coexistence and provide a canvas for the history that nature embodies. Intertwined amongst the threads lie sarees which link my story to the stories of those who visited before me, inviting the audience and universe to leave their own impressions within the twine.
2016
Materials:
Digital Photography
Description:
‘Speaking Figures’ is a photographic archive of Indian women in rebellion. The piece was constructed in a way to give agency to the women in the images, who simultaneously represented themselves and every other woman.
Here the volunteers were photographed in two colors of the choosing. The colours and the quotes thus became a symbol of strength and power.
2018
Material:
Chiseled Sheet Metal
Description:
‘Paper Plane’ is an ironic representation of a ‘paper’ plane. The gesture of creating something that would only take a few minutes when created using paper, highlights the materiality of the structure.
the installation of the piece plays with the idea of the visible and the overlooked as the metallic leaves come together to form the structure.
2016
24 x 66 in
Materials: Yarn, wood, convex mirror and Indian glass bangles
‘Illusion’ manifests an impression of the social acceptance within Indian society regarding the female body and its natural processes. The hourglass structure confidently stands before the audience with its white and crimson yarn in light for judgement. Broken bangles and fractured reflections are the only evidence to the true nature of the pressure imposed upon the figure by the supposedly contemporary social era that still holds on to warped ideas of tradition.
2018
Materials:
Inflated Sheet Metal
Description:
The Inflatable metal structures are stacked in a heap to highlight its form and texture.
The structure pushes the limitations of the material and creates an interconnection of the separate parts.
