Artwork > 2009-2011

Documentation of a video installation in Chicago, IL

This is one of the earliest pieces in which the persona of Aaji appears. Named after the term my grandmother used to describe her paternal grandmother, my research suggests that Aaji is a remnant of a form of Bhojpuri that is no longer spoken. Within my grandmother's body, Aaji is both dead and alive, a ghost of the past, a link to a culture and time that we will be forever fractured from. Aaji is a silent specter who occupies the present, gazing back out into the world. Larger than life but also existing in the liminal space of the scrim.