रेखाएँ | threads — Vivek Jain

रेखाएँ | threads

(2023, India | Photographic Installation)
(29.7 cm x 42 cm Black and White Prints on Rismaqua Ghiaccio Paper, framed within Handbraided Jute)

My aunt, Antima, passed away amid my nomadic master’s education. When I was oceans away, her tragic loss left me with endless questions. Initially, it was the grave realisation of her absence and the guilt of fostering a long distance from her. Gradually, I found myself recollecting every memory whose existence I was unaware of. Upon my arrival to my nation, I spent several weeks documenting the lives of all the women who survived her death: her sisters and her mother, along with her ten-year-old daughter, Aarzoo.

This photographic journey started as a grieving process. As time passed, I found myself spiralling down, confronting all the regressive realities and hegemonic structures that shape their existence and how it also contaminates my relationship with them. I discovered countless narratives that coexist and unfold every day - Lalita and her daughters, Kamna and her sisters, Aarzoo and her aunts, or some women named, ‘Lalita, Maalti, Kamna, Neelam, Varsha, Shilpa, Aarzoo’; amongst millions who are navigating themselves in India’s patriarchal system.

Amongst hundreds of still images, I feel these macroscopic portraits of their palms encapsulate their struggles, their labour and their grievances faithfully, away from my polluting interventions.

The lines of their hands are like links, like threads weaving their realities with each other, where I am trying to trace mine.

They merge into each other but are distinct.

vivek jain

motion

१. biological mother
२. other reality
३. confluence
४. égszilánk
५. anonüümne
६. sh!t just got real
७. ouroboros
८. the dubliner

fragments of my memories

innominate collective
innominate films