Priya Kambli

My work has always been informed by the loss of my parents, my experience as a migrant, and an archive of family photographs I brought with me to America and which has been my primary source for creating artwork exploring the migrant narrative through a personal lens. For the past decade, this archive of family photographs has been my primary source material in creating bodies of work that explore the migrant narrative and challenges of cross-cultural understanding, providing a much-needed personal perspective on the fragmentation of family, identity, and culture that are part of the migrant experience. In Buttons for Eyes, my concern for the past that is lost to me is apparent, but so is my concern for the future and the losses that will come. It reveals that although this work mythologizes the past and present it also plays games with them. It winks, pokes and inverts – suggesting joyousness, mixed with the loss and regret that accompanies us all.