Indigo Darpan, speaks about the British Indigo planters exploitation in India in 1800's through the lens of a then banned play called 'Nil Darpan' (Indigo Mirror written by Dinabandhu Mitra). In the polyvocal narrative the layers of facts, fiction and myths are contested, stuck, peeled, torn and rebuilt. The soundscape is a speculative architectural space of post colonial protest.
The Deluge : bodies of the disenfranchised are targets of exploitation, violence, prejudice, and injustice at such times of crisis. They are pillaged, used, devoid of agency, and abandoned to decay. There is a schematic erasure of stated female yearning and longing in this hostile atmosphere. I utilize my artistic practice as a coping mechanism at pressing times of environmental crisis, conflict, violence, and ongoing danger to equality and fundamental constitutional rights. The work is a personal narrative of gendered and caste based shame and bullying I have experienced in recent past. I use my soft body as a surface to respond to this language of violence and abuse while drawing parallels to the deluge Mumbai city experienced due to climate change and environmental exploitation. The dominion of the soft body soaks and sheds expectations, prejudices, and limitations on freedom, safety, health, mental wellbeing and sexual desire.
Not your nautch girl : Azizan Bai a warrior courtesan who picked up arms and trained an army of woman warriors to fight against the British Empire in 1857 India speaks up for herself. Women performing artist of the 1800's were termed derogatorily as 'nautch girls' (dancing girls) by British empire even when some of them were highest tax paying citizens on the country to dislodge their political power and undermine the art institutions which trained and nurtured future artists. This decolonial feminist work asks us to relook at figures erased by the colonial archives and collective memory.
Raising : Postcolonial Flag, textile sculpture, performance and film. 2024 Made with hand dyed cotton fabric in indigo , the flag delves into how language was used to manipulate power structures in British empire. Positive terminologies were used to describe the colonization effort when the true picture of exploitation, slave trade and famines were kept hidden. The flag is a post colonial version of the union jack where these dualities are sandwiched in textile medium. The film is shot on streets of London which were built with money from colonial exploitation.
What We Carry : Installation and Performance Art This work expands on the idea of the body as an archive by flattening, collaging and colliding moments in time and space. Materially made with the cyanotype method of replicating architectural drawing issued to site for construction on hand-woven cotton fabric panels sewed together. By using found objects, I am attempting to decolonize the rifts brought about by deliberate erasures.
Touch me : hold me : Femininity is an entangled phenomenon. My choice of soft materials speaks to many generations of women who used stitching, weaving, knitting and embroidery as a means of self-expression in collective culture and memory. I use these tools of mending, healing and a repetitive meditative practice as a medium to create my shrine. Transforming found material I am looking for ways to decolonize the ruptures caused by systematic erasures. The sound is my voice singing myself a lullaby in my mother tongue. I wished to create a visceral space for softness. Can tenderness and intimacy be acts of resistance?
There are as many walls inside me / as there are bones at the bottom of the sea. This work is in response to systematic erasures caused by colonialism, toxic masculine society, exploitation and violence in public and private spaces. Body as an archive of hate, vengeance, memory and making. In performance the dance cannot be separated from the dancer. This improvisational movement performance piece works with erasure of self ( with face covering) and the spectator’s gaze, limitations of body and space and the instrument of ghungroos tied on my feet. Each bell represents a voice, together they create a community of voices. This piece is concieved as a long performance piece in experimental spaces.