Home-Land (2023)
Installation - 10 recycled wooden frames of varying sizes, reused industrial mesh/ netting, turmeric powder, Kumkum (red turmeric) and rice flour. Dimensions variable.
This piece references the already existing craft of Indian Rangoli that exists in different forms in various communities across India. The Parsis in India use small metal tray-like stencils with designs perforated through, while some use netted frames blocked to form the design they wish to adorn their doorsteps with. A space where the outside world and inside share a border - a political and personal boundary shared in between.
Bringing this reference to Australia, as a body working on unceded, stolen land - places and displaces the work. It becomes its own ephemeral border to a home that is not really mine, a home that is not really here. So the designs in the frames will be a mix of text- like feminist activist Mona Eltahawy’s quote –
‘The revolution at home is the hardest because all dictators go home.’[1]
surrounded by overlapping outlines of borders of countries sharing a line on a map.
[1] Eltahawy, M. (2022). Essay: When Girls Erupt. Available at: https://www.feministgiant.com/p/essay-when-girls-erupt
The wooden frames are meant to be the medium, i.e. the technology to create the rangoli and the work itself- hang on the wall as independent ‘paintings’ before and after the performance.
The spices used to create the ‘painting’ on the ground, seek to anchor the work in a post-colonial context, referencing the ravaging of homes by colonisers over the trading of spices in India. The stain and smell of these spices on the floor of the University space where it was first performed, also pollutes the stolen land on which the artist is performing this work.
The traditional custodians of the Eora nation and Gadigal land are remembered and acknowledged within this piece. As people who have been repeatedly told what, where, who and how they can call home, this is an ephemeral resistance to the very notion of another body telling you where you belong.
