SHIVANJANI LAL

Yaad Karo

To remember, to stitch together and piece fragments of history for both collective and individual remembrance. To recenter knowledge, to account for colonial and personal histories. To connect the dots between that which has past and the realities of those lived experiences. To allow something invisible to become visible. To hold space for ancestors - past, present and future. 

Yaad Karo is a new work by Shivanjani Lal that looks at the history of migration that links her personal history to the indentured labour community of India and the Pacific. Her process driven practice uses labour as a tool to account for the trajectories of labour across oceans. Lal uses stitching to create visible links that records the journeys made by her community and her self, connecting and remaking the lines of connection. In looking at shipping documents and in using a map, which centres Australia between these oceans, she reframes this history by acknowledging the role of Australia as the localised colonial presence.

Yaad Karo contains 42 hand-stitched maps. Each map marks every year from the first arrival of Indians in Fiji until the end of Indenture. 

Image: Shivanjani Lal, Yaad Karo AIRspace Projects Inc 2018