ARTIST STATEMENT
 
Twice an immigrant, my identity has mutated with each experience of the cultures of the places I have called 'home.' Navigating life through three regions of the globe has helped me to observe the perverse effects of social hierarchy, its product - the marginalized and the displaced. Material and medium have always been key players in forging these concepts. As a convergence of material and content, my work emerges as forms that articulate these interests.

My work is committed to social justice. My present practice explores patriarchy and misogyny by inquiring into the tradition of religious servitude within certain sects of Brahmanical Hinduism. This body of work questions the hidden motives underneath the display of beauty within the rituals of graphic patterns and language, and the conspiracy of dominant classes in using beauty and “well being” to lure the marginalized and the destitute into servitude.

Like Brahmanical Hinduism, the discipline of printmaking is encumbered by too many traditional constraints. In the print-based works the two inhabit and reference each other in the use of ancient and new scripts, patterns, references from temple architectural plans, and the ‘square’ motif - symmetrical/unchanging. The act of cutting and unorthodox approaches to print media became important ways of depicting and relating these motifs. They also subvert the conspiracies of both traditions. The newer emerging body of work, however, is shifting toward merging words/text with visual elements. As the stories of victimization continue alongside the stories of empowerment, the urgency to include the voices of the victims has become more apparent to me. The text narratives unfolding the stories of the young victims and their goddess, also a victim, are becoming central elements in the new work.