My work comes about from my interest in the shared historical experiences of the Indian and African diasporas.  My interest is personal because I am a third generation southern African of Indian descent.  My current work embodies and alludes to questions of manual and repetitive labor as this was one of the reasons that brought indentured Indian laborers to South Africa, the Caribbean and other places that have a history of sugar cane cultivation whilst taking captured Africans from their homelands to slavery on  sugarcane and cotton plantations to the Americas.  Sugar production was only one of the activities that tied these two diasporas.  Other shared colonial experiences were the dismantling of indigenous economies and cultures, the creation of new borders, alignments and divisions of peoples.

An example is the destruction of India’s self reliant cotton industry and its relocation with the knowhow to England.  The spinning Jenny was invented which in turn fired up England’s industrial revolution.  Cotton plantations where African slaves worked were established in the New World colonies to feed the hungry machines in Manchester who’s products were later fed back to the very populations from which they had come.  Taxes were imposed on all colonized populations to force then into the colonial economic system.  Managerial skills that were acquired on the sugar cane and cotton plantations were used later on tea
plantations, another labor intensive endeavor in India and other parts of Africa.

My work also alludes to labor practices in the modern world and the eerily similar way in which it still operates.

42" x 108" Cotton, glue, burnt sugar

20" x 21" Cotton, glue, burnt sugar

20" x 26" Cotton, glue, burnt sugar