Comfort Zones

I had my exhibition 'Comfort Zone' at Red Dot Gallery in December 2007. My work is a continuation of the theme of 'middle class home maker' which I started in more or less 2001. This time my work was looking at the home maker of my mother's and grand mother's generation through a sense of nostalgia. It is my own way of dealing with the distance as well as the proximity I have to the things they believed and the things they did as women... I feel there is a generational gap here which means that I have difficulty in believing that I would do certain things they did or that I would wear certain cloths they wore or that would react the way to things as they reacted. But it does mean that I am missing them in a sense and therefore I have made it a source that triggers my nostalgia. This is much more complex than a 'rejection'.


Following is my concept on the comfort Zone.

..Comfort zone exhibition is all about looking back at the home maker of my mothers and my grandmother’s generation through my nostalgia and in a process of memorizing and remembering. I am trying to reconstruct my memory of their presence, how they related to things, how they organized home, their anxieties and the comfort they provided...

Comfort Zone and Dinner for Six: Inside Out is an attempt of looking back at the (middle class)home making women of the previous generations . It is built on memories, memorizing, nostalgia and understanding and misunderstanding. I am looking at women from my own families. They belong to a generation of convent education, crochet curtains, home science and cookery books. The 'Comfort Zones' unveils my familiarity and proximity to this home maker’s world and the anxieties and expectations that manifest in different stages of her life. They are the wives, mothers, grandmothers, aunts. They are the comfort providers for the family and sometimes… they are the silent grievers bearing the aches of life. I remember with nostalgia and guilt the comfort of this home maker’s world. I memorialize this nostalgia and guilt in the ‘ Memorizing an Era (series of painting) and Comfort Dresses’ (sculptures). Dinner for Six summarizes home-maker’s parameters of freedom, the energy invested by her and the negotiations that goes into establishing her existence and her agency within the home as I see it within my families.