Anaardana, 2024
Anaardana draws inspiration from still life painting while incorporating contemporary cultural elements.
Using bindis - an item worn daily by many women in India and South Asia - as dana (seeds) in the pomegranate (anaar), the fruit is imbued with symbolic meaning. The pomegranate is often associated with femininity and eternity. From the basket on nani's table to the cutting board at my mother's house, the gesture, while beautiful, reflects an overwhelming burden of self-sacrifice. A reflection of my previous video work, An Apple a Day, this image speaks to the constant, often unnoticed acts of giving by women in Desi societies. This photo accompanies a series of 9 photographs of similar content. The series shifts more directly towards the act of quiet and repetitive labor embedded within domestic life. The placement of bindis within fruits operates as both a visual intervention and also the gesture of repeated acts that are ever present but overlooked. Within diasporic life, this labor takes an additional weight of carrying culture forward across distance/dislocation, acknowledging the tension of this feminized repetition of domestic labor as well - the idea of it becoming burdensome, a responsibility to hold and sustain traditions. The work is about holding on to cultural memory through habit and everyday rituals.