Teri Maa Ki Rotiyan (Your Mother's Chappatis)

In this project, I picked up elements from the popular to highlight the contradictory factors within representation that co-exist and balance each other out. I attempt to create an unsettling and at the same time humorous experience by juxtaposing different elements picked up from the public and domestic spheres.

This work began by looking at various visual representation of 'Mother' that float in popular visual culture. What I am interested in is the relationship between images that circulate within the Public domain - The nation state that plays a dominant role in operating the circulation and consumption of these images and the domestic setting where they are seemingly normalized by daily usage. There is this normative value driven representation that exists, and beside it are debates within representation of various forms of popular imagery that also go on.

What are the many notions of 'Mother'? Does the 'Mother' that is represented even exist? My main purpose is to highlight the overwhelming presence of the mother icon in public imagination which has on one hand converted into a sacred figure over time and on other hand has also been subjected to subversion. Through this project, I examine the co-relation between the existent reality and the images associated with it- how certain kinds of imagery is associated with a particular word through repetition of certain traits and negation of any other meaning of the word. Through repetition, these meanings become normative and any other sort of meaning of the word then becomes abnormal or even offensive. It is this overloaded, value ridden and extremely romanticized 'Mother' that I try to map here. Be it the melodramatic mother of cinema or the Bharat Mata.