Installation

a touching

This piece features a collaborative poem hand embroidered onto the artist's mother's saree. A floating embroidery technique in incorporated so that the piece may be viewed from both front and back. From the front, the letters appear full and from... More

Installation

amma & her touch

These works bring together contrasting ceremonial objects and practices to explore hybridity as a careful interweaving of two cultures.

Installation

dear amma

This installation which combines poetry with a hand embroidered work on the artist's mother's saree speaks to themes of longing for the mother, the mother tongue and the mother land in diasporic experiences. White thread is used to emphasize how... More

Installation

feeling, feelings

This installation deconstructs the most crucial elements of the artist's practice while disrupting and decolonizing the rhetoric of white cube gallery. A sense of feeling full and empty is echoed in this installation and refers to double... More

Painting

oil paintings

This series of oil paintings reference the Hindu practice of applying turmeric paste to various parts of the body. The paintings tell stories about ritual, hair braiding, symmetry, pattern, and discipline. A technique of layering paints,... More

Mixed Media

pallu pattu

This series celebrates different cultural objects reaching toward each other to become and take space as a hybrid object which may speak to experiences of diaspora. Themes of duality, mirroring, repetition, and symmetry are explored.

Performance

performative films

This series of performative films seek out lost memories that reveal intimacy as well as estrangement. By performing with sounds, cherished objects and memories from her past, the artist investigates loss, longing and displaced melancholia. She... More

Creative Writing

poetry/short story book

A collection of poems, pictures and stories with handmade red book marks. The artists writing is in a style that is intentionally naive, romanticizing longing and envy and is in acceptance of trauma both diasporic and racial in nature.

Mixed Media

strictly braids

In this series, the artist juxtaposes projections of colonial imagery and white gaze from renaissance paintings with objects and memories of loss and longing. The artist investigates how the black braid which often represents her embodied inventory... More

Work by

Par Nair

installation, oil painting, performative film, digital collage, embroidery

“I investigate and explore melancholia in diaspora using decolonial methods and a return to ancestral knowledge and practices. Through objects and memories that are both intimate and estranged, I wish...” [More]

Artwork Collection

Notes on diasporic melancholia

This body of work explores decolonial melancholy in diasporic journeys through installation, embroidery, performative film, oil paintings, digital collage and poetry.

a touching

This piece features a collaborative poem hand embroidered onto the artist's mother's saree. A floating embroidery technique in incorporated so that the piece may be viewed from both front and back. From the front, the letters appear full and from... More

amma & her touch

These works bring together contrasting ceremonial objects and practices to explore hybridity as a careful interweaving of two cultures.

dear amma

This installation which combines poetry with a hand embroidered work on the artist's mother's saree speaks to themes of longing for the mother, the mother tongue and the mother land in diasporic experiences. White thread is used to emphasize how... More

feeling, feelings

This installation deconstructs the most crucial elements of the artist's practice while disrupting and decolonizing the rhetoric of white cube gallery. A sense of feeling full and empty is echoed in this installation and refers to double... More

oil paintings

This series of oil paintings reference the Hindu practice of applying turmeric paste to various parts of the body. The paintings tell stories about ritual, hair braiding, symmetry, pattern, and discipline. A technique of layering paints,... More

pallu pattu

This series celebrates different cultural objects reaching toward each other to become and take space as a hybrid object which may speak to experiences of diaspora. Themes of duality, mirroring, repetition, and symmetry are explored.

performative films

This series of performative films seek out lost memories that reveal intimacy as well as estrangement. By performing with sounds, cherished objects and memories from her past, the artist investigates loss, longing and displaced melancholia. She... More

poetry/short story book

A collection of poems, pictures and stories with handmade red book marks. The artists writing is in a style that is intentionally naive, romanticizing longing and envy and is in acceptance of trauma both diasporic and racial in nature.

strictly braids

In this series, the artist juxtaposes projections of colonial imagery and white gaze from renaissance paintings with objects and memories of loss and longing. The artist investigates how the black braid which often represents her embodied inventory... More

Work by

Par Nair

“I investigate and explore melancholia in diaspora using decolonial methods and a return to ancestral knowledge and practices. Through objects and memories that are both intimate and estranged, I wish...” [More]