Laila — I work outwards from the Persian and Indian Miniature painting, I have been trained in the traditional methods and materials, and translate them into my visual format. My paper is handmade by a family based in Rajasthan who has produced especially for miniature painting for generations, and my  pigments are all naturally derived from stone, plants, and earth.

I’m interested in domestic dynamics, most often from the female perspective and in the context of the wider socio-political atmosphere. What impact does unrelenting access to outside news have on internal life? How do we negotiate our political affinities within our relationships? Where do we draw the line in our social transactions between acts of defiance as a people and internalized defiance as a person? What are the implications of control?

Anousha — My work explores the boundaries between personal experience, fiction, and myth. Informed by Indian folkloric stories and personal fiction, it plays on ideas of the performative powers of objects and chance; the combination of moral dilemmas and magic alongside characters with transformative qualities. 

Within a body of work— for a duo show with Laila called Tangled toes, twisted ears at the Public Gallery in London— I began to reference the Irish side of my heritage by looking at iron-age Celtic sculptures Another autobiographical element to my work is the remaking of clip-on Bharatanatyam plaits. The plaits are made by pressing clay through my grandmother’s Murruku plaits. They are a way of processing inherited familial rituals through making. These autobiographical works are a way of archiving memories whilst processing identity as a hyphenated woman in London. 

Anousha — It’s important for me to build up a kind of alphabet of textures for the characters I work with to become immediately recognizable in their varying forms. The textures come to fruition through experimentation with varying tools, materials, and surfaces. It also interplays with the use of glaze, in particular, I mainly use two-toned or floating glazes to accentuate them. Clay lends itself perfectly to this process. 

Laila — The symbols I use are the equivalent of words, and the paintings are sentences. Words differ in function based on their placement in relation to one another—making the empty space the punctuation.

My painting style is a product of immense control. It requires unrelenting neatness and total command of the brush. The miniature tradition is tight, steady, and time-consuming. What if the punctuation is emptiness, the control of placement and population? The negative space is the implication of movement, the letter spacing, the full stop. Place a face on the bottom right-hand corner facing in and suddenly it marches inwards—it’s invading the space. Place the same head on the bottom right-hand corner facing the edge of the page, and it’s a full stop, it’s reached the wall. 

Anousha — The stories I feel the most connected to depict women as characters with transformative or magical powers. Their powers or generosity are often taken advantage of, so I reframe them in an empowered light—returning their autonomy to them. I came across a book called ‘Women Without Men’ by  Shahrnush Parsipur when looking into stories about women turning into trees. Something Parsipur’s writing shares with folktales is the natural description of the unnatural alongside the day-to-day or mundane. 

What interests me about folktales is the possibility that the narrative may have changed over time, but there isn’t a written record of such changes. We have to imagine how the stories have adapted over centuries and passed down through different communities. This also resonates with how I interpret folktales—I adopt and respond to parts of the narrative that I relate to now, reinterpreting them through a lens that suits the place we live in now. Inherited knowledge manifests in everything we do: mannerisms, tendencies towards certain imagery, tastes, objects, friendships, and our interactions. 

Laila — I’d prefer to think that the painting itself is the writing, while the viewer is the reader. This allows all that informs my practice to persist beyond the pieces (objects and paintings) and continue into the viewer, and the sentiment can tumble forward…so on, and so forth. 

Anousha — There will be two rattan and walnut wood heads with ceramic flowers for the show. The character is based on both the folktale ‘A Flowering Tree’ and the character Mahdokt from Parispur’s 1990 story collection ‘Women without Men’. ‘A Flowering Tree’ is about a woman who repeatedly transforms into a tree. Always performing for others rather than herself. Her generosity is taken advantage of, and she becomes stuck—half human/half ‘thing’. The works are about returning her autonomy to her. 

I will also show two paintings that are based on a character from a short story I wrote—called The Gravity of Fur. The protagonist, trapped in loneliness and the meaninglessness of life, builds her narrative by creating a love affair with an imagined creature. The paintings question whether it’s an existentialist attitude or a dissociative one. A love affair with a creature that cannot and does not exist.

Laila — I will show three pieces that are part of a larger body of work reflecting on womanhood and consequent dynamics of control (political and domestic). The two faces used in the paintings are recurring characters at the moment. The large male face is fashioned after a totalitarian, a policer. His brow is heavy, and his ears large. The small women are women in totality. The faces are all in profile to avoid any sense of individuality—they are signifiers, unrecognizable outside of their purpose. All the characters are in a state of movement, walking/marching. The frames are made of wood to acknowledge that all these observations are happening from within the home. They are adjacent to domestic objects like cupboards and tables. All three pieces are titled after bugs, Lice, Termites, and Bedbugs. They’re pestilent and unrelenting—they’re thoughts. 

Anousha — Nourishment Projects is an itinerant exhibition and supper club platform initiated by me and my friend Sasha Szecka, to raise money for Prasanth Silluvar Illum (Prasanth Children’s Home) in Tamil  Nadu. The ethos of the home is to support the children, not just until they are 18, but until they have secured a  degree or a career that enables them to thrive and allows them to build a life for themselves. 
In 2019, I became aware that it was my responsibility to raise funds for the home, and I realized I would never continue to fundraise unless it was focused on something I love. This involved bringing together some of my favorite artists, eating with friends, cooking, and speaking to other people who like to cook food. Nourishment is still very much at the beginning; so far we have had two shows and one fundraising event.

Anousha — For the dinner with Laila we will both be using recipes inspired by our families; turning familiar flavors into something new together.

Anousha — Something I think about often is food’s ability to evoke memories and become a vessel for shared experiences; sharing food and eating together was a huge part of my childhood and continues to be a priority in my daily rituals. It’s incredible how strongly just a mouthful of familiar food can trigger a memory. This is also something I try to explore through Nourishment Projects.

Laila — I will cook and nourish ’til my very end.