What is a ‘Home’? A three-dimensional space to seek physical respite and solace? An architectural splendor to boast of? A tattered bunker to hide from vicious grenades? A self-imposed magical cocoon to build dreams on…?

The womb is our first home, that warm throbbing sac that gives us life and nourishment, calms us with consistent heartbeat – the first music to a human ear. Yet, a time comes for this home to be dismantled and purge out into the outside world with a shriek… a world less cocooned.

All our lives we shift through multiple homes, sometimes forcibly and sometimes by choice redefining our identities with every shift, as we adapt to the unknown. Assembling and dismantling homes have become a constant reality in our burgeoning metropolises. Older lodgings make way for new high-rises, even as we move out to weave new stories.

But what of those stories woven by our ancestors? Where do they fit inside our plush multiplexes? A stained old photograph perhaps becomes the only remnant of a once large household, yet it lives on as a memory of that sacred space, a warm and comforting memory, like the womb we once inhabited and left to claim a new identity beyond.

First Home
Size 10 x 10 inches
Screenprint on Somerset Paper
2018

The Universe reflects
in every atom and element
a moving image, as if,
reflected on countless shards.

Broken mirrors
multiple illusions
each true
each lived
a conundrum, as if,
a parody of existences
jumbled and distorted.

Memories add sheen
steeled or shredded
not ours to choose
only to be absorbed
by divine fate, as if,
into the Homeland
where we planted
our roots.

Homeland 1
Size 9 x 11 inches
Collage, Drypastel, Thread, Ink
& Acrylic on Fabriano paper
2017

Homeland 7
Size 9 x 11 inches
Collage, Ink & Acrylic on Fabriano paper
2018

Homeland 3
Size 9 x 11 inches
Collage & Acrylic on Fabriano paper
2018

Homeland 4
Size 9 x 11 inches
Collage & Acrylic on Fabriano paper
2018

Homeland 5
Size 9 x 11 inches
Collage, Ink & Acrylic on Fabriano paper
2019

Homeland 6
Size 9 x 11 inches
Collage & Acrylic on Fabriano paper
2018

Homeland 6
Size 9 x 11 inches
Collage, Thread & Acrylic on Fabriano paper
2019

Homeland 9
Size 9 x 11 inches
Collage, Ink & Acrylic on Fabriano paper
2018

Homeland 10
Size 9 x 11 inches
Collage, Ink & Acrylic on Fabriano paper
2019

The Homeland series recounts changing histories of families, in the context to their ‘homes’. It ideates upon preserving the memories of vanishing dwellings, amidst fast altering modern landscape.

Each ‘home’ is a bond with the soil it stands on. It is this gravel that nourishes and withstands the weight of habitation, till it turns into a grave of rubble.

The ‘home’ remains though, in the embroidered meanderings of warm remembrances, of shared tears and laughters.

The series has been created by pasting collages on paper embellished with block-prints, overlapped at times with thread embroideries.  There is a purposeful intention in creating visual illusion between painted and collaged forms, a signature style of the artist.

Aurat 7
Size 18 x 22 inches
Cotton-rag Pulp, Thread,
Collage, Seeds & Beads
2019

Aurat 2
Size 18 x 22 inches
Cotton-rag Pulp, Thread,
Collage & Wooden beads
2019

Aurat 6
Size 18 x 22 inches
Cotton-rag Pulp, Thread, Collage,
Rose Pollens, Glass and Pearl
beads
2018

The AURAT series delves deep into the feminine psyche and questions the notion of her quintessential identity in context of ‘home’ and its significance in her life. It relates how the feminine body, itself becomes a home – a site of comfort and solace. The body therefore becomes a metaphor for home – a nest for the progeny to germinate and flourish. In context of the histories of partition and dislocation faced by this nation, the feminine body also becomes the site of memories in the form of genetic continuity of races, enlivened through her future progeny. It evokes histories of irreparable losses of physical spaces and identity, reinstated by a determination to adapt and subsist despite all adversity.

The series is created with cotton-rag pulp, threads, seeds, beads and photographic collages based on images of women collected from archives and other sources. The rulebook pages stand as a metaphoric agency that addresses the feminist discourse with reference to the foundations of pedagogic establishments of identities. The layered pulp fuses the myriad elements to weave an enduring narrative of histories and memories of women of this  nation, in salutation of their sacrifices and triumphs.