I am a multidisciplinary artist, I create artworks which reflect on sufferings and chaos of destructions caused by humans. I investigate in what ways can creative practice express the sufferings of elusive Postmemories – both shared and personal?
I work towards shared catharsis for the darkest and bloodiest era of modern South-East Asia. Drawing on Postmemories of the India-Pakistan 1947 Partition, I retell the haunting stories my mother and relatives told since childhood. Being the second generation of migrants from the 1947 Partition, I am left with memories that I did not form but became mine and so investigate the fallout of the tragedy through Postmemories by re-imagining and re-imaging non-verbal processes to communicate the traumas and catastrophes of the 1947 Partition. I give form to unspoken, unbearable, and concealed inherited memories of my own culture.
1947 marked the beginning of independence from the British Empire, starting the darkest and bloodiest era of the Indian subcontinent. In August 1947, colonized India was divided by Britain into two independent nations: India and Pakistan, known as the Partition. Dividing the continent was not peaceful, and in the absence of a cohesive government an uncontrolled, uncivilized, desperate, and barbaric migration began between the two countries. People were forced to flee their homes overnight; millions lost their lives; and hundreds of thousands of women were raped and abducted in both countries. The scale of destruction, genocide, and massacre was massive, uncountable, unforgettable, unbearable, and unspeakable. The list of atrocities is endless and unlimited.
I non-verbally narrate the past stories through my paintings, screen-prints, handprints, footprints, sculptures, films; they all come together, and the past becomes alive.