Veena (2016) is an installation in Saris are hung from the ceiling cascading onto the floor. A video portrait is then projected onto the extended fabric which pans in and out of a young woman, focusing on specific aspects of her body. The accompanying audio recounts the story of Veena, a narrative of an Indian woman sharing her experience of migrating to England many years ago. The voice of Veena comes from the Apple dictation accents from Apple inc.
This installation aims to play with the viewer's perception of authenticity and narrative. Visually the viewer is confronted with a feminine display of delicate patterned fabric and the visualization of a woman. Coupled with the audio, it is unclear if the voice of Veena is in fact a real human, a computer, or someone for whom English is a second language. This fluxes is meant to point to ideas of false nostalgia, orientalism and exotisicm that is often found in works from artists who come from diasporic communities.
