nobody ceases to exist when they die

My latest artists book nobody ceases to exist when they die comprises 35 photographs based on my ancestral family records handwritten in Urdu called Bahisht-E- Aziz a book now too fragile to be handled in its original and has been given to a socio- historical archive in Benares. I have montaged the pages describing my ancestral home and several generations of family from my mother’s side with family portraits, binding pages from right to left like Urdu books. Some are people in the photographs I know, some only heard of in stories orally handed down through the years similarly the Urdu text selected from the original narrative is according to my limited understanding of the past, memory, time and fresh insights now re-contextualised. Through these images and documented personal history one sees feminism, poetry, art and social values not as abstract ideas but as embodied by people as they live their everyday lives leaving a cultural legacy to continue beyond their years.