Personal Mythologies 3
“Personal Mythologies 3” explores the diasporic experience as it relates to family history and memory. Using text, sarees, and projection I’m interrogating the construction of hybrid identities as sites of translation. The translation within the piece occurs not between languages but between forms - from garment/object to screen/surface, from event to memory, and from image to text.
The sarees, chosen from my mother’s collection each with long histories of their own, both display the text and allow it to pass through. The sarees and the text mutually affect each other at the points where projections meet surface, entangling similarly to the way the projection of the self and Other meet on the surface of the individual. The projected text recalls family photographs from memory and contemplates how memory and nostalgia come together to create a personal mythology.
Through the disruption of the text pieces and the intertwining of multiple histories and narratives, notions of untranslatability, what is hidden and revealed, and the authenticity of memory and identity, I seek to involve and implicate the viewers in considering the importance and relevance of these narratives to the construction of a personal identity.