Thief.

Thief, 2020
99 Loop Gallery
99 Loop Street, Cape Town, South Africa

I am an artist, finger painter and female concerned with the surface and the perceived. My painting process is intuitive. It relies on what my fingers remember and what the paint and surface reveal. I am fascinated by the idea of muscle memory: procedural memories the body stores as a subconscious response.

I often wonder if the body holds generational muscle memory and what power or strain this extends to children of migration, those inheritors connected to the sea by diasporic voyages often imposed by colonisers with ships or in pursuit of false promises. During the lockdown, confined to my apartment, I longed for the sea. I am fourth generation Desi, and sometimes I imagine the hundreds of young Indian women traveling across the ocean, watching the waves and swells endlessly hit the hull of the boat. How many earrings were accidentally lost in travel or spitefully thrown overboard, perhaps with its owner? Sometimes I daydream about golden heirlooms glistening on the ocean floor.

In this period of isolation, all I did was daydream (or is it all I do?). My great grandmother was thirteen when she was coerced into leaving India, already promised to her husband: she met him on the boat. Over the waves, she was promised a better life, promised wealth, promised a chance. The ocean offered her promises but held back truths, and with every wave passed, my heritage became an unreachable mirage. Years and years later my sister left for America when she was nineteen, also promised better, this time over cyberwaves. She got married during the Covid lockdown. Trapped on the other side of the ocean, I watched from home.

My life seems to be happening across an unswimable ocean, over salt-water-waves and cyber-wave connections. A life lived through video calls is like treading across the sea with a pool noodle, each moment a mirage of pixels.

It is likely you will view this artwork on a screen as a mirage. Being a brown woman, I'm used to the mirages, to oysters without pearls, to missing earrings, but at some point, is the ocean ever going to pay me back?

'Thief', 2020

Mixed media on Belgian linen

160 x 100 cm

'Pearl Diver', 2020

Acrylic ink and glue on canvas

103 x 103 x 5 cm

'Virtual Holidaying I & II ', 2020

Acrylic ink and glue on canvas

200 x 200 cm

'Virtual Holidaying I', 2020

Acrylic ink and glue on canvas

100 x 200 cm

'Virtual Holidaying III, 2020

Acrylic ink and glue on canvas

100 x 200 cm

'The world's your oyster baby..but he owns the pearls ii', 2020

Mixed media on canvas

15 x 25 cm

'The world's your oyster baby..but he owns the pearls i', 2020

Mixed media on canvas

15 x 25 cm

'Does the sea feel my touch', 2020

Acrylic, silver leaf and glue on canvas

103 x 203 x 5 cm

'Virtual Saree tying with minimal buffering', 2020

Mixed media on canvas

'Mother of pearl', 2020

Freshwater pearls on canvas

15 x 25 cm

'Does the hot house flower miss the sun?', 2020

Mixed media on canvas

15 x 25 cm

'Dissapointed but not surprised', 2020

Gold leaf and glue on canvas

103 x 103 x 5 cm