Priya Kambli: The States Project: Missouri

Priya Kambli: The States Project: Missouri by Jess T. DuganJanuary 10, 2017

©Priya Kambli

Priya Kambli and I originally met in person somewhat by chance at a Southwest gate at the St. Louis airport in 2015 while waiting to board a flight to New York to participate in the annual New York Times Portfolio Review. We were both carrying large portfolio cases, which inspired us to strike up a conversation, though we quickly realized we were already familiar with one another’s work.

Originally born in India, Priya moved to the United States at age 18 carrying her entire life in one suitcase. She began her artistic career in the States, and her work has always been informed by this experience as a migrant. Over the past several years, she has made several bodies of work, including Color Falls Down, a conversation with her ancestors and an effort to reconcile the cultural dualities that have helped form her hybrid identity; Kitchen Gods, a series of altered family photographs; and her recent project Shubh Mangal Savdhan, a series of re-contextualized photographs from two familial wedding albums.

Priya received her BFA at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette and her Master’s degree in Photography from the University of Houston. She is currently a Professor of Art at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri. With that, I introduce Priya Kambli.

Shubh Mangal Savdhan

In the body of work Shubh Mangal Savdhan (a mantra that announces and cautions at the same time, the arrival of the auspicious wedding moment), I am re-contextualizing photographs from two different wedding albums -my parents’ and my maternal uncle’s – by obscuring and revealing information. The act of mining an archive of images has been central to my work throughout my career, focusing on the collection of family photographs brought with me to the United States when emigrating here at age 18 and other family photographs that I have recently inherited. The occlusion of the photograph is done using flour- the alterations I make to these photographs, the use of pattern in and on top of the object, have been described as a form of fenestration. Though they obscure the image, they create windows through which underlying structures are revealed.