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.


In Shah's own words: "This is a portrait of my great-grandmother. This passport documents her journey across India and Kenya, a journey that many Guajarati Indians had made when Kenya and India were colonised by the British.

When I travelled to Kenya in 2017 for the first time as part of this project, I took this passport with me and created this still life in Nairobi. I wanted this image to include my journey to my family’s past, so as homage to my great-grandmother and my grandmother Nalini, I picked fresh bougainvillaea from Canal Road, where their home use to be. I wanted this image to travel across time and space, through generations so there is a piece of her and a piece of me in it. Canal Road was difficult to track down when I visited Nairobi in 2017, because all the road names had changed from when my family lived there to after Kenya gained its independence from the British in 1963."