Artist Statement

ARTIST STATEMENT

In my paintings I raise questions about what and where is “home”, while evoking issues such as identity, immigration, motherhood, and the role of art in social change. I am a Bene Israel Jew from India; my family has gradually dispersed, mostly to Israel and America, but my parents remained in India. I am now also an American, living and working in New Jersey. With such a background, the desire to “find home”, spiritually and literally, has always preoccupied me — a concern that I feel many Americans can relate to, as this comparatively younger nation was largely formed by immigrants and their descendants. The feeling I have of never being able to set deep roots no matter where I am is unnerving, but on the other hand, there is something seductive about the spiritual borderland in which I seem to find myself. In my paintings I combine the imagery of my past with the role I play in America today, making a mosaic inspired by both Indian/Persian miniature paintings and Sephardic icons.

I remember the ornate synagogues of my childhood, the oil lamps, the velvet- and silver-covered torahs, a chair left vacant for the prophet Elijah in our Bombay synagogues. Having grown up in a predominantly Hindu and Muslim society, having been educated in Catholic and Zoroastrian schools, being raised Jewish in India and now living in America I have always had to reflect upon the cultural boundary zones in which I have lived. My family has married American, Yemenite, French, Cochini and other Jews. I even have a set of Ethiopian cousins. I am married to a Connecticut native who was raised Russian Orthodox but who also has the Jewish faith as part of his family mix. In the 70’s he became a Buddhist and studied Indian classical music for some years with a Indian maestro in California. We now try to raise our children in the mosaic of all that we can bring to them.

My work is celebratory of my womanhood, my abilities, my strengths and my ambitions. After having struggled long with my own hybrid background and experience, I am beginning to see more clearly now that this blend can be humorous, enlightening and revealing. The ornate culture from which I came once seemed difficult and unnecessary to apply in my work. Now I have found a way to use it, to be able to weave current issues and parts of my life in its intricacies, thus making this ornateness strong and meaningful. In this way, I attempt to create a dialogue between the ancient and the modern, forcing a confrontation of unresolved issues.

In this multicultural America (and world) I feel a strong need to make art that will speak to my audience of our similarities, not our differences, thus making the art making process contribute to the conversation about issues like stereotyping and religious intolerance. By making images that question issues like identity I feel I can contribute to a much needed “repair” (Tikkun in Hebrew). I would like my audience to re-evaluate their notions and concepts about identity and race, thus understanding that such misconceptions could lead to racism, hate and war.

A place of mind I have realized is a sort of state of mind for an immigrant like myself that came to the US 19 years ago for graduate school. Never imagining I would stay on and that I would feel so solidly American one day and yet be in so much of a flux about where the borders of my homeland lie. I have therefore come to the conclusion that the search to find the perfect “Place” or “Home” does not exist and that “not belonging” has therefore given me an opportunity to encounter home perhaps at any given time or place……or even sometimes not at all.