Bougainvillaea Maharas © Arpita Shah

Hear artist Arpita Shah discuss the work in her exhibition Nalini and join in the Q&A session afterwards.

Developed across India, Kenya and the UK, Arpita Shah’s Nalini is a personal journey exploring the entwined histories of Arpita’s mother, her grandmother and herself.

The exhibition includes contemporary portraits, forgotten family photographs, and family heirlooms including a sari from East Africa and a well-travelled suitcase passed between the generations. With a focus on migration, distance and loss, Nalini offers an insight into Shah’s maternal lineage, exploring universal themes of family nostalgia and belonging.

Free event, donations welcome. Booking recommended via Eventbrite.

Part of our Feed Your Mind series of talks supported by The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

Top image: Bougainvillaea Maharas (detail) © Arpita Shah

Artist

  • Artist Talk with Arpita Shah — Impressions Gallery

    Arpita Shah

    Arpita Shah (b. 1983, Ahmedabad, India) is an artist based in Edinburgh, Scotland. She works between photography and film, exploring the fields where culture, heritage and identity meet. She graduated from Napier University in Edinburgh in 2006. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Detroit Center of Contemporary Photography (2013); Tramway in Glasgow (2014); Focus Festival in Mumbai, India (2015); Chobi Mela IX in Dhaka, Bangladesh (2017); and Autograph APB in London (2018). She is the recipient of the 2019 Light Work + Autograph ABP Artist-in-Residence programme in Syracuse NY to develop Nalini into a photobook. Shah undertook a residency at Street Level in 2011/12 from which she produced the series Nymphaeaceae, premiered in 2012, and the series Dear Green Place shown recently on The Travelling Gallery (2018) and as part of an exchange with Photofusion, London in February 2019. Her series Portrait of Home, a Festival 2014 commission, was shown at Trongate 103 and as part of Street Level’s Commonwealth Family Album in public sites during the Commonwealth Games in 2014, then touring to a number of community venues in Glasgow.

Artist Talk with Arpita Shah — Impressions Gallery