Artist Neha Gupte invited me to collaborate with her on her brilliant, Memories of Home art series.
The series was started by Neha as a collection of prints, an ode to our home in India where her journey of becoming a lover of all things flora and fauna first started. The work she created takes her back to her childhood, the time when she first spotted a Paradise Flycatcher from her window and when she would collect Ixora and Frangipani flowers fallen on the road on her way home from school. These artworks are a treasure trove of nostalgia and warm memories that are deeply rooted in her being. Each illustration in the artwork was hand painted with watercolours and illustrated with pens. The illustrations were then laid out together and compiled digitally.
Rooting my thought process within her concept, I wanted to capture the bittersweet feelings of reminiscence attached to home as an extension of oneself. I digitally infused Neha’s artworks onto my photographs and by that, tried to etch her memories onto these self portraits. Each image was photographed on a plain backdrop and the prints were added into them in post, to make them a part of home, part of something lived in. The images portray the complexity of how I feel when thinking of a childhood home. A place one is separated from at some point in their life and yet, one carries it with themselves on their skin and within, no matter where they may find themselves in the world.