This Artist’s Project first appeared in Art Journal vol. 84, no. 1 (Spring 2025)
Spanning India, East Africa and the United Kingdom, Nalini explores the connected histories of my mother, my grandmother, and me. The series reveals ancestral intimacies across space and time, and how our histories, memories and bodies are intertwined.
Nalini is my grandmother’s name; this story was inspired by and begins with her. Born in India, she spent most of her childhood in Kenya before moving back to the country of her birth. Although I visited her in India every couple of years, I realized how little I really knew about what she was like as a young woman, her memories, experiences, and what her relationships were like with her own mother and daughter. Each year she got frailer, more forgetful, and more distant, so I started this project to learn more about her and my female ancestors because I wanted to feel closer to them.
Apart from being my grandmother’s name, the word nalini comes from the ancient Sanskrit word for lotus. Floral motifs are a recurrent feature in my work and this iconic plant symbolizes femininity, fertility, and rebirth in Hindu culture. In Nalini, I perform floral offerings to the women in my family, and some of my images feature symbolically significant flowers adorning old photographs from family albums.
Although I was born in India, I spent most of my childhood in Saudi Arabia and Ireland before settling in the UK, so Nalini has been a very personal journey for me, one which has allowed me to reconnect with the past through my maternal lineage. The series comprises portraits that physically connect me to my mother and grandmother, as well as photographs of objects and places that hold special significance for the women in my family.
Bougainvillea Mahara, Ahmedabad, India, 2016 
Canal Road, Nairobi, Kenya, 2017
Nalini’s Hand, Ahmedabad, India, 2017 
English Blue, Ahmedabad, India, 2015
Arpita Shah is a photographic artist and educator based in Eastbourne, UK. She works between photography and film, exploring the fields where culture and identity meet. Her work has been shown internationally, including in Canada, India, United Arab Emirates, and across the UK. She is the recipient of the 2019 Light Work and Autograph ABP Artist in Residence program in Syracuse, New York. Her work is in the collections of the National Galleries of Scotland, the Hyman Collection, and the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery.