The Hyman Collection is delighted to announce the acquisition of Arpita Shah’s touring exhibition Nalini. This substantial addition joins Shah’s Modern Muse, already held in the Hyman Collection, and deepens our commitment to her work and its exploration of South Asian women’s lives.
Developed across India, Kenya and the UK, Nalini traces the relationships between Shah, her mother and her grandmother. Through their experiences, the series explores how migration shapes family life, how memories pass between generations, and how a sense of belonging can endure across geographical distance.
The work brings together colour portraits, still lifes and landscapes with images drawn from the family archive. Individual photographs, diptychs and a triptych create connections between women’s bodies, flowers, domestic possessions and places associated with the family’s past. In its touring presentation, the exhibition has also included family heirlooms and archival material, including saris, passports and a suitcase carried between India and East Africa.
Named after Shah’s grandmother, Nalini began with the artist’s recognition of how little she knew about her grandmother’s early life. Born in India, Nalini spent much of her childhood in Kenya before returning to India. As she grew older and her memories became less accessible, Shah began to recover photographs and stories that would bring her closer to her maternal ancestors. The resulting work considers the intimacy and tensions between generations, alongside the losses and separations that have shaped their lives.
‘Nalini’ is also the Sanskrit word for lotus, a flower whose associations with femininity, fertility and rebirth inform the series. In Nalini in Bloom, Shah rephotographs a studio portrait of her grandmother with dried lotus flowers, creating a floral offering. In Canal Road, her great-grandmother’s passport is accompanied by bougainvillea gathered at the site of the family’s former home in Nairobi. These arrangements connect inherited photographs with the artist’s own journeys, making the family archive a meeting place between past and present.
Close studies of hands, hair and skin give physical form to these connections. Throughout the series, the body and the photograph bear traces of time, while familiar objects carry memories of people and places. Shah’s account of her own family opens onto a wider history of migration and the ways women preserve and transmit cultural memory.
Nalini was first presented at Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow, in 2019, and subsequently shown at An Lanntair, Stornoway; Impressions Gallery, Bradford; Duff House, Banff; and, most recently, Firstsite, Colchester, from 13 June to 4 October 2026. 'Nalini' was originally produced with support from Street Level Photoworks, Creative Scotland and Hope Scott Trust.
Arpita Shah (b. 1983, Ahmedabad, India) is a photographic artist based in Eastbourne. Working across photography and film, she explores cultural identity, heritage and belonging. Her work is held in collections including the National Galleries of Scotland and Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery and the Hyman Collection.
