A performative film that documents the artist embroidering the words "amma", meaning mother in her mother tongue, Malayalam on a white veil. Themes of duality, hybridity, repetition and symmetry are explored. This film celebrates two contrasting cultural objects reaching toward each other to become and take space as a hybrid object which may speak to experiences of diaspora.
Short film of the artist performing with her grandmother's diary while recalling a visceral yet fragmented memory of her mother braiding her hair. It is a meditation on intimacy as well as estrangement.
My braids tight with memory.
My braids loosening with desire.
My braids undone without an archive.
By othering the viewer, "Strictly Braids" is a play on the expectations and translations of racialized and migrant bodies. It recognizes the effects of assimilation and loss of culture within an immigrant experience and centers the body as a fragmented and hybrid archive of dualities. The artist performs with braided hair, digital reproductions of renaissance paintings and a Shruti Box.
Stills from short film featuring a phone conversation between the artist and her grandmother as she creates oil paints on her kitchen counter with powdered turmeric.