My work deals a lot with family archival photographs. A lot of the photographs were taken before the race riots and the Group Areas Act in Durban, specifically Cato Manor. The photos are taken within peoples homes. People cooking, people lying on the lawn.

It’s this idea of identity, and how I feel South African Indian history is completely omitted from South African schools and learning. It’s this sense of not feeling placed. I think most Indian South African people don’t feel inherently very South African. We feel South African to a degree, but we don't necessarily feel Indian, from India either. I find it quite difficult to share it, because I’m sharing it from a personal experience. 

Embroidery has traditionally been passed down through generations of women. Mothers and grandmothers teach their daughters, embedding cultural and familial heritage into the craft. I come from a long lineage of generations working with fabric, textile and embroidery and beading. My grandmother was the seamstress of our family. She would make the bridal wear and do the beading, stitching and embroidery. 

And these pieces, I think of these pieces as artworks garments that were so detailed and so beautiful. They must have taken hours, days, months, to make, and they were worn on the day, and then get packed away and left in the dark, not seeing the light of day again. This bothered me, because essentially, these are her artworks.

I think the dialogue of craft and oral history go hand in hand. One of the methods of stitching I use is called ‘Kantha’, a very old traditional Indian type of embroidery. It started off with people in the villages of India, when they experienced winter. They would weave together scraps of fabric with a running stitch. It became like a beautiful tool of storytelling for women. They would form their own direct language, to document the histories of the family.

These women would have bartering systems and markets where they would exchange fabrics, and have exhibitions essentially. They would share their stories by looking at the stitching. That idea of oral history and literary craftsmanship told through human experience, is what I try and do but in my own visual language, and finding my voice within that to create a dialogue between the two.

For my grandmother, the idea of meditation is very traditional: cross legged, eyes closed, index fingers and thumbs together. She didn’t realise that it could be anything else. For me personally, meditation is a moment of quiet and stillness within oneself. I find embroidery cathartic and healing. This act of craft and embroidery accompanied my grandmother through all of the trauma she experienced. When I asked her how she felt when doing this work, she said it made her feel at ease. I pointed out that it was a meditation, but she could not see that it was so much more than just a calming activity. I now realise it’s a generational coping mechanism borrowed from my grandmother, and then my mother, and then it trickled down to me. 

I don’t want to be a prophet. I want to express how I feel, the trauma of my family, the trauma of the community at that time, and heal it through the meditative process of embroidery and beading. 

Cyanotypes have a long history in photography and draftsmanship—the term blueprints comes from cyanotypes. The idea of draftsmanship is something that is present throughout the work, because I feel, inherently, all artists are a work in progress—there’s never an end. Artists never retire. We just make until we die. 

This idea of constantly workshopping something and the fact that a cyanotype in itself is essentially a draft of something, has such a strong history in the male dominated history of photography. Then over time it became perceived as a domestic female pastime, where women would take plant clippings and dry them and make cyanotypes out of that, and no longer taken seriously. That’s a big part of my practice. It resonates with what Audre Lorde said about how femininity and working with crafting techniques is never taken seriously. In my work I ask, why not? I call it the residency dogs, that come knocking when you’re left alone, letting all these ideas come flooding in.

I’ve done a few residencies now. I call it the residency dogs that come knocking when you’re left alone, and let all these ideas come flooding in. You get drunk on all possibilities. The residency goes through an exchange of energies and creativity like a revolving door. I really thought about all the other people that came before and how they used the space in comparison to how I did. I was so reliant on the sunlight, the pH of the water, the physical act of moving the cyanotypes and glass plates—all these elements impacted how the works decided to show themselves.

The cyanotype solution is blue and its stains. Whatever it touches, is embedded with that blue. I felt less conscious of making a mess, because the space is vast, and you know that your imprint is just one tiny blip in a bigger process of other people’s blips. I felt like everything was left where it should be. 

The interesting thing about a cyanotype is that they it is a living thing. If you expose a cyanotype, if it’s had too much in the sun, it will disappear—the imagery will become ghost-like. But you can resurrect it by just leaving it in the dark, and then you can put it back on the light. 

I love that idea of it being its own living thing, because you’re capturing a snapshot of a past time now, so recalling a period, a memory. But even after doing it, it can disappear, just like how memory works, like you forget something and then something, a smell or a sound will trigger you and bring you straight back.

I feel like every artist’s body when it comes to making, becomes this tool, this vessel to make the imprint that you want to make. My cyanotypes are large, and they use a lot of energy. You are in a dark room, being sensorily deprived—it’s quiet, it’s dim, and then you have to deal with something wet and cold. You’re moving with your hands and your body to see and feel if everything is where it needs to be, and then waiting for that to dry.

There is this patience and anticipation in waiting, and then when it’s ready, you need to move the negative quickly, because it’s light sensitive. You have to get it into the sun, leave it there to sunbathe, and watch it constantly, because anything can happen. The wind could be really tough. You have to wait for the sun’s magnificent rays to penetrate through the negative into the solution and singe the image in, and then wait for that to dry. You then remove the glass, and then run towards the tap to rinse it all off. It’s this interesting cycle of wet, dark, quiet, dry, wet, and then dry again to introduce the stitching or beading.