Spanning India, East Africa and the UK, Nalini explores the connected histories of Arpita Shah, her mother and her grandmother. Bringing contemporary portraits and still lifes together with family photographs and heirloom objects, the series traces the effects of migration, distance and loss across generations. Shah’s search through family archives and visits to places connected with her maternal ancestors led to new discoveries about their lives and relationships. The title is her grandmother’s name and the Sanskrit word for lotus. Flowers recur as offerings to the women in her family: the lotus symbolises femininity, fertility and rebirth, while bougainvillea connects memories of India and East Africa. Photographs of bodies, possessions and places bring these family histories together.


This photograph isolates a rough, broken fragment of brick against a plain, pale background. The brick, collected in 2017, is from the remains of the Krishna Dairy Farm building in Nairobi, which Shah's family owned in the 1930s. Frank McElhinney recounts in WOSP and PIX that Shah and her mother initially struggled to locate the dairy because the road names had changed after Kenyan independence. A chance connection enabled them to find the site, and Shah took a fragment from its wall as a tangible record of the journey.