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.


Arpita Shah explaines that "This is a portrait of my mother in Ahmedabad, India. She’s entering wild bougainvillaea that leads to where her childhood home once was. She’s wearing a sari that matches the dusty pink petals, because we wanted the image to look like she was sinking into the photograph and returning to the past.

Bougainvillaea is very significant in Nalini, because my grandmother always told me that the first thing she noticed when she moved back to India from Kenya, was that the bougainvillea reminded her of Nairobi. Bougainvillaea is originally from Brazil but was propagated and planted by the British in countries they colonised such as Kenya and India. So, like us, they have migrated across lands and are just as displaced, but they still remind us of home."