Timelines (Ongoing work)
A tableau of images—including the artist’s parents, student protests, and Rosa Parks’ mugshot — collide in this new body of work that considers the recursive nature of storytelling. Scenes from films, iconic photographs of international events, and personal images cover the different faces of boxes, which can be arranged in a myriad of ways. Whether stacked, flattened, opened, or closed, the works’ viewpoints resist linear narratives, highlighting the contradictions that arise when “unpacking a story.”
- MoMA PS1
Acrylic, gesso on corrugated cardboard boxes
Documentation of the boxes have been made with the help of Adil Hasan
Delhi
1. Chashme Baddoor, 1981. Film directed by Sai Paranjpye
2. Anti-Sikh Pogrom, 1984
3. Mandal Commission Protests against reservation by upper caste people, 1990
4. ‘Atrocity cases against SC/ST on the rise in Delhi’: report in The New Indian Express, 7 September 2023
5. Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro and PLO Leader Yasser Arafat join and raise hands together following the PLO closing speech at the final session of the 7th non-aligned summit conference, New Delhi, 13 March 1983
6. Winter night at the Shaheen Bagh protests against the Citizenship Amendment Bill, December 2019
7. Nizam of Hyderabad pays homage to King George V and Queen Mary at the Delhi Durbar of 1911 held to mark their coronation as Emperor and Empress of India.
8. Coronation Park, New Delhi – located at the same venue as the Delhi Durbars of 1877, 1903 and 1911, today known as ‘the graveyard of statues (colonial statues)’
9. Indira Gandhi announcing the Emergency in India on June 25, 1975, just before midnight.
10. Mona Ahmed with Dayanita Singh
11. Neelgai (Bluebull) and rabbit become friends during the monsoon in 2024, in Jahanpanah forest.
12. Axone, 2019. Film directed by Nicholas Kharkongor
13. Anti-muslim pogrom in North East Delhi, 23 – 29 February 2020
14. Iftar at Jama Masjid
15. Monkey man hysteria, 2001
16. In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, 1989 - written by Arundhati Roy and directed by Pradip Krishen
Mother
1. Partition of India.
2. My mother’s family relocated from Dhaka to India post 1947. (My father’s family relocated from Lahore to India post 1947)
3. Mother and father 1979/80
4. Family photograph – early 1960’s
5. Portrait of mother 1970’s
6. A photograph of my mother with her school friends 1960’s
7. My mother accompanied my father up the Shatt Al-Arab river on his merchant marine ship at the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war, 1980/81
8. Mother’s medication after her diagnosis for schizophrenia in 1999
9. Grandmother after the death of my mother’s father, 1982
10. A photograph of my mother and me, 1982
11. Mother with Elsa 2001-2013
12. Portrait of my mother from university days, 1970’s
Sheila
1. Sheila’s father reaches Shanghai by river on a junk boat from the rural provinces, 1973.
2. A photograph of Sheila and her mother before her mother left for the US to join her father who had left a year before to earn a living. Sheila would not see her mother again for four years after that moment. 1980’s
3. Catholic school in New Jersey and a memory of being able to see George Washington bridge from the classroom – 1990’s. For some, a landmark of the “American Dream” is the statue of liberty or the Empire State Building, but for me, it’s the George Washington Bridge.
4. A memory being on a boat on the Hudson river and being the only non-white kid on board – 1990’s
5. A portrait of Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, a Chinese -American women’s rights activist and minister who campaigned for women’s suffrage in the 1910’s
6. With friends on Rabbit Island, skinny dipping in the sea during a bloom of bioluminescent algae – late 2000’s
7. Meeting close friend Kosuke Okahara in 2007 in Cambodia
8. 17 March 2019, with Callum
The Bus
1. Jo Ann Robinson, Montgomery Bus Boycott
2. Rosa Parks, Montgomery Bus Boycott
3. Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Montgomery Bus Boycott
4. Martin Luther King Jr, Montgomery Bus Boycott
5. Dalit woman forced to get off bus for carrying beef in Tamil Nadu, 22 February 2024
- MoMA PS1
Acrylic, gesso on corrugated cardboard boxes
Documentation of the boxes have been made with the help of Adil Hasan
Delhi
1. Chashme Baddoor, 1981. Film directed by Sai Paranjpye
2. Anti-Sikh Pogrom, 1984
3. Mandal Commission Protests against reservation by upper caste people, 1990
4. ‘Atrocity cases against SC/ST on the rise in Delhi’: report in The New Indian Express, 7 September 2023
5. Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro and PLO Leader Yasser Arafat join and raise hands together following the PLO closing speech at the final session of the 7th non-aligned summit conference, New Delhi, 13 March 1983
6. Winter night at the Shaheen Bagh protests against the Citizenship Amendment Bill, December 2019
7. Nizam of Hyderabad pays homage to King George V and Queen Mary at the Delhi Durbar of 1911 held to mark their coronation as Emperor and Empress of India.
8. Coronation Park, New Delhi – located at the same venue as the Delhi Durbars of 1877, 1903 and 1911, today known as ‘the graveyard of statues (colonial statues)’
9. Indira Gandhi announcing the Emergency in India on June 25, 1975, just before midnight.
10. Mona Ahmed with Dayanita Singh
11. Neelgai (Bluebull) and rabbit become friends during the monsoon in 2024, in Jahanpanah forest.
12. Axone, 2019. Film directed by Nicholas Kharkongor
13. Anti-muslim pogrom in North East Delhi, 23 – 29 February 2020
14. Iftar at Jama Masjid
15. Monkey man hysteria, 2001
16. In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, 1989 - written by Arundhati Roy and directed by Pradip Krishen
Mother
1. Partition of India.
2. My mother’s family relocated from Dhaka to India post 1947. (My father’s family relocated from Lahore to India post 1947)
3. Mother and father 1979/80
4. Family photograph – early 1960’s
5. Portrait of mother 1970’s
6. A photograph of my mother with her school friends 1960’s
7. My mother accompanied my father up the Shatt Al-Arab river on his merchant marine ship at the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war, 1980/81
8. Mother’s medication after her diagnosis for schizophrenia in 1999
9. Grandmother after the death of my mother’s father, 1982
10. A photograph of my mother and me, 1982
11. Mother with Elsa 2001-2013
12. Portrait of my mother from university days, 1970’s
Sheila
1. Sheila’s father reaches Shanghai by river on a junk boat from the rural provinces, 1973.
2. A photograph of Sheila and her mother before her mother left for the US to join her father who had left a year before to earn a living. Sheila would not see her mother again for four years after that moment. 1980’s
3. Catholic school in New Jersey and a memory of being able to see George Washington bridge from the classroom – 1990’s. For some, a landmark of the “American Dream” is the statue of liberty or the Empire State Building, but for me, it’s the George Washington Bridge.
4. A memory being on a boat on the Hudson river and being the only non-white kid on board – 1990’s
5. A portrait of Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, a Chinese -American women’s rights activist and minister who campaigned for women’s suffrage in the 1910’s
6. With friends on Rabbit Island, skinny dipping in the sea during a bloom of bioluminescent algae – late 2000’s
7. Meeting close friend Kosuke Okahara in 2007 in Cambodia
8. 17 March 2019, with Callum
The Bus
1. Jo Ann Robinson, Montgomery Bus Boycott
2. Rosa Parks, Montgomery Bus Boycott
3. Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Montgomery Bus Boycott
4. Martin Luther King Jr, Montgomery Bus Boycott
5. Dalit woman forced to get off bus for carrying beef in Tamil Nadu, 22 February 2024
The School
1. A portrait of Jai’s (Jaisingh Nageswaran) grandmother, Punnuthai today an iconic Dalit rights activist in Vadipatti, Tamil Nadu who started a school in the village for all children including Dalit children in 1953.
2. The school was demolished by upper caste people in 1980 during the village festival
3. I solemnly assure you that I will not die a Hindu, Ambedkar’s address to an audience of over 10,000 in Nasik on October 13, 1935 where he vowed to no longer live under the humiliation conditions of the caste system. Twenty one years later on October 14, 1956 Ambedkar renounced Hinduism and converted to Buddhism, seven weeks before his death.
4. Evenings spent at Mullei Periyar river. Post Covid
5. Jai with N Dhanapal, 1990’s. Today, N Dhanapal is part of VCK (Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi), formerly known as Dalit Panthers of India. He also takes care of Punnuthai’s school today.
6. Narmada river from Jai’s early days of photography when he went to Madhya Pradesh to photograph the Narmada Bachao Andolan, the people’s movement against displacement due to the damming of the Narmada river.
The Olive Tree
1. Mahfouza Odeh hugs an olive tree cut down by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. November 27, 2005
2. The Holocaust, 1941
3. The Balfour declaration, 1917
4. The Nakba,1948
5. Poppy flowers, Spring
6. Jewish refugees from Iraq arriving at Tel Aviv’s Lod airport in 1951.
7. Photo Studio Al-Ameen. Weddings in Palestine 1960’s-90’s
8. October 7, 2023
9. December 2023
10. PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin during their meeting at Erez checkpoint on September 25, 1994.
11. The Great March of Return, 30 March 2018 – 27 December 2019
12. The Separation Wall, West Bank, September 2000 – Present
13. Standing ovation for Benjamin Netanyahu at US congress, 24 July 2024
Bees
1. Beekeeping in Ancient Egypt - 26th Dynasty hieroglyph depicting a beekeeper with their hives of bees.
2. Modern day apiary (Exploitation. ofbees)
3. Chipko movement 1973-74. Opposing commercial logging and government policies on deforestation, protestors in Garhwal Himalayas wrapped their arms around trees so that they could not be felled.
4. US President Barack Obama signing the Monsanto Protection Act, 2013
5. Battle Of The Bees, 1914 – The first major war in Eastern Africa, where the British colonial forces comprising many Indian soldiers were defeated by a smaller group of German Askaris and colonial ‘volunteers’ in Tanga. Besides strategic blunders, bees whose hives had been disturbed by the machine gunfire also stung the fighting soliders.
6. Dogs stung by bees – current Instagram algorithm.
7. Bees
Protest
1. Student activist Durga Thapa at the victory rally in April 1990 following the Jana Andolan (People’s movement).
2. Aragalaya: The Struggle, The 2022 Sri Lankan Protests
3. Tamil students protest in Jaffna against the Sinhala-Only Act, 1961. “Shoot if you must and I am ready to die” the young student tells the soldier who threatened him with death if he did not move away.
4. A portrait of Umar Khalid, an Indian student activist currently a political prisoner, 2020-present.
5. The 2024 Bangladesh student uprising against Sheikh Hasina and the Awami League.
6. Soldiers drag away a student in Dhaka during the movement against Ayub Khan, 1962
7. Bushra Aitzaz, a human rights activist arrested during a protest in Lahore against restrictions imposed on women during the Zia-ul-Haq era, 1983
8. Ladeeda Sakhaloon and others from Jamia Milia Islamia University protect their friend from being beaten by the Delhi police during the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act that started in December 2019.
9. ‘The Last breath of Zolile Hector Pieterson, a schoolboy in the arms of Mbuyisa Makhubu in Soweto on 16 June 1976’ at the Soweto uprising when school children protested the implementation of Afrikaans and English as the medium of instruction in secondary schools instead of native languages. Reference photograph by Sam Nzima.
Mail
1. 1929: The Air Mail leaving Croydon for India – the start of a service that brought Karachi within a week of England
1. A portrait of Jai’s (Jaisingh Nageswaran) grandmother, Punnuthai today an iconic Dalit rights activist in Vadipatti, Tamil Nadu who started a school in the village for all children including Dalit children in 1953.
2. The school was demolished by upper caste people in 1980 during the village festival
3. I solemnly assure you that I will not die a Hindu, Ambedkar’s address to an audience of over 10,000 in Nasik on October 13, 1935 where he vowed to no longer live under the humiliation conditions of the caste system. Twenty one years later on October 14, 1956 Ambedkar renounced Hinduism and converted to Buddhism, seven weeks before his death.
4. Evenings spent at Mullei Periyar river. Post Covid
5. Jai with N Dhanapal, 1990’s. Today, N Dhanapal is part of VCK (Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi), formerly known as Dalit Panthers of India. He also takes care of Punnuthai’s school today.
6. Narmada river from Jai’s early days of photography when he went to Madhya Pradesh to photograph the Narmada Bachao Andolan, the people’s movement against displacement due to the damming of the Narmada river.
The Olive Tree
1. Mahfouza Odeh hugs an olive tree cut down by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. November 27, 2005
2. The Holocaust, 1941
3. The Balfour declaration, 1917
4. The Nakba,1948
5. Poppy flowers, Spring
6. Jewish refugees from Iraq arriving at Tel Aviv’s Lod airport in 1951.
7. Photo Studio Al-Ameen. Weddings in Palestine 1960’s-90’s
8. October 7, 2023
9. December 2023
10. PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin during their meeting at Erez checkpoint on September 25, 1994.
11. The Great March of Return, 30 March 2018 – 27 December 2019
12. The Separation Wall, West Bank, September 2000 – Present
13. Standing ovation for Benjamin Netanyahu at US congress, 24 July 2024
Bees
1. Beekeeping in Ancient Egypt - 26th Dynasty hieroglyph depicting a beekeeper with their hives of bees.
2. Modern day apiary (Exploitation. ofbees)
3. Chipko movement 1973-74. Opposing commercial logging and government policies on deforestation, protestors in Garhwal Himalayas wrapped their arms around trees so that they could not be felled.
4. US President Barack Obama signing the Monsanto Protection Act, 2013
5. Battle Of The Bees, 1914 – The first major war in Eastern Africa, where the British colonial forces comprising many Indian soldiers were defeated by a smaller group of German Askaris and colonial ‘volunteers’ in Tanga. Besides strategic blunders, bees whose hives had been disturbed by the machine gunfire also stung the fighting soliders.
6. Dogs stung by bees – current Instagram algorithm.
7. Bees
Protest
1. Student activist Durga Thapa at the victory rally in April 1990 following the Jana Andolan (People’s movement).
2. Aragalaya: The Struggle, The 2022 Sri Lankan Protests
3. Tamil students protest in Jaffna against the Sinhala-Only Act, 1961. “Shoot if you must and I am ready to die” the young student tells the soldier who threatened him with death if he did not move away.
4. A portrait of Umar Khalid, an Indian student activist currently a political prisoner, 2020-present.
5. The 2024 Bangladesh student uprising against Sheikh Hasina and the Awami League.
6. Soldiers drag away a student in Dhaka during the movement against Ayub Khan, 1962
7. Bushra Aitzaz, a human rights activist arrested during a protest in Lahore against restrictions imposed on women during the Zia-ul-Haq era, 1983
8. Ladeeda Sakhaloon and others from Jamia Milia Islamia University protect their friend from being beaten by the Delhi police during the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act that started in December 2019.
9. ‘The Last breath of Zolile Hector Pieterson, a schoolboy in the arms of Mbuyisa Makhubu in Soweto on 16 June 1976’ at the Soweto uprising when school children protested the implementation of Afrikaans and English as the medium of instruction in secondary schools instead of native languages. Reference photograph by Sam Nzima.
1. 1929: The Air Mail leaving Croydon for India – the start of a service that brought Karachi within a week of England