Wanted Beautiful Home Loving Girl

Inspired by matrimonial photographs in my family albums that were made to aid arranged marriages in India, I recreate a counter-archive--staging self-portraits in my domestic space, against hand-painted backdrops that evoke Indian photo studios.

My work is an exploration of my origin and inheritance, which is embedded in the figure of my mother. It deals with memory, transgenerational trauma, personal and collective histories–and how they inform identity. Using interdisciplinary mediums– such as photography, site-specific installations, printmaking, writing, and video–I centre and engage with women’s presence and experiences in the family albums which I brought with me to the United States from India upon immigrating. 

Family albums–a primary instrument of self-knowledge and representation–celebrate success, leaving out depictions of trauma, grief, and mourning from its pages to perpetuate the myth of an Ideal Family. Like a manifesto, it declares its intentions and motives through candid or staged photographs. In my practice, family albums are an entry way into domestic labour–not washing dishes or cleaning, but the work it takes to stay related to someone, even my family.  

My current project, Wanted Beautiful Home Loving Girl, is an exploration of the histories, legacies, and conventions of matrimonial portrait photography in Indian arranged marriages. Inspired by matrimonial photographs of my grandmothers, aunts, and mother within my family albums, I reimagine the tradition by staging self-portraits within my domestic space that often evoke Indian photo studios, expanding the boundaries of public and private. Historically, the traditional matrimonial photograph has acted as a visual currency exchanged between families, wherein the prospective bride is expected to perform her desirability, femininity, and domesticity for the male suitor through prescribed gestures and good looks, which comply with Eurocentric beauty standards, the colonial imagination, and the male gaze.

In Wanted Beautiful Home Loving Girl, I explore the politics of desirability, femininity, and domesticity in the contemporary context, making feminist photographs as well as ‘thirst traps’ that constitute my matrimonial archive for potential suitors. I visualize my body in scenes that are complex, exaggerated, and mundane restagings of vernacular matrimonial photographs. By making self-portraits, I continue to negotiate with belonging in and returning to the family alum. Focussing on refusal and resistance, the work acts as a counter-archive that foregrounds quotidian forms of self-representation through humour, performance, and play–allowing for reimagined and speculative feminist futures.