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 passport photograph of my mother when she was 16, taken in India. In the image she’s wearing floral fabric from Kenya, that her grandmother had given her, so the image is already layered with that history. I wanted to add to the image by planting the passport photograph into white sand that I collected from my journey in Kenya, so all four generations could co-exist together in one image.

The white sand almost looks like ashes, but as you get closer you can see it’s coarse grains of sand from Mombasa beach. As an artist I’m interested in how a single photograph can bring various narratives together across time and space. I often work with old archival photographs, using them as a vehicle to return to the past, but intervening with them so I can add new narratives to them."