On Memory

The Weight of our past

(2021) Archival pigment prints of performance

Photographs by Lois Bielefeld

One never really leaves the past behind. It is embedded in us like DNA and the grit under our nails and molds us into who we are. 35 years after leaving my home country India, the complexity and weight of its culture is still pressing. An immigrant’s life is loaded with the responsibility of passing on identity, heritage, expectations and memory of the place that we left behind. It is an exhausting, messy and weighted tangle despite its color and beauty.

Accretions I, II, III, IV

2024 and ongoing

Fragments, remnants, gifts, tokens, and keepsakes seem to end up with me, sticking to me like flies to fly paper. Some of these are either quotidian and mysterious and some are sentimental and religious. For one reason or the other, I simply cannot discard them in the trash. Each item in this work has a memory or meaning attached to it that is only known to me. The cloth is my father's scarf, imprinted with shadows via cyanotype, and then used as a substrate to respond with drawings of places I've been to or embroidered with impressions of natural materials that have moved me. Beads from gifted rosaries, travel tokens, my mother's needlepoint and cross stitch, and fragments from previous projects get layered one on top of the other each bearing a story. Together they represent the tapestry of life's experiences. These are ongoing works that will keep getting denser as I get older and will only be finished when I die. Multiple processes and elements, and ongoing accretions of materials are key to the work. The label information for each work includes a list of objects and their source.

Recall and Response

(2020-22) large works on hanji (Korean handmade paper) sizes: 57” x 60” and 60” x 132”

Contained: The memory of things

(2019) Fabric, spices and plaster casts of objects my friends and I brought to the United States when we migrated

Protective Footwear

Flexwax, turmeric powder, map tacks, 2017.

My grandmother used to apply turmeric to our feet when my mother and I said goodbye after a visit. I still remember the feeling of cool turmeric paste on hot summer feet and the golden stain on my skin for days to come. Two protective materials, turmeric and wax come together in this work inspired by this childhood memory. Notions of travel and what the body remembers over long periods of time and immense change are expressed in this work.