There’s a funny joke in my family where they’ll say, like, “You would have been a good doctor, but you’re a better artist.” So I tried everything else. I ran away from it. But you can’t run away from what your chosen purpose is.

I became an artist, I think, because I had to say things. I had to tell stories that impacted history, impacted the present, impacted the future. I needed a larger sense of purpose. When I did take up this traditional way of making pigments, traditional way of painting, it was more about rooting myself in something larger than myself.

This is a process that my grandmother used to have as a part of the rituals of Diwali. This lampblack pigment is made from combustion, which is when you light the oil, you produce fire, and then you collect the precipitate from that burning flame. I can just remember my grandmother’s hands doing a motion like this. I think hands of grandmothers always feel like these really tender images.

I don’t have much to read that my own grandparents wrote. And they went through these, you know, events, like the 1947 Partition. Like, you know, even going through waves of immigration. And then my own parents have gone through immigration, and then myself also as a 12-year-old who all of a sudden found myself on the other side of the world trying to figure out, well, what is this new place?

I think legacy, especially as a woman, I think legacy is at the forefront of what I do and why I do it. In the painting here at the de Young, I was angry about what was happening in the world during the pandemic. Seeing the funeral pyres that were being lit everywhere in India at the time, and how easily and how quickly we moved on from that.

This painting comes from that question, that why are we not valuing certain lives? The work in the center is that raging of fire, but also that certain fire is there to complete the cycle of life and death. And these women, you know, wearing dupattas, these, you know, elderly ancestors or these guides, where they are saying these are realities of the world. But there are everyday acts of kindness, of presence, of just noticing that are also recommended guidelines.

It’s also something that I hope I can transfer to, like, a 15-year-old girl who walks in to see my work and says, “Oh, this. You know, this looks like what my grandmother would look like. Wait, she’s wearing a dupatta? What, in this space?” And all of a sudden, instantly, that space becomes a room and not a large institution.

I always make work with the goal of somebody seeing it. The circle is not complete until somebody has seen the work. Many times all people will see is just color. But that making of that pigment is so intentional. It takes labor, it takes thought, it takes care. I think this color red is so deeply, physically tied to the story of a woman’s body, whether it’s experiencing things like, you know, menstruation, pregnancies, but also so much violence. Having indigo tied into this really dark history that it’s had in the world, but using it in water and using it as a backdrop many times for, you know, moments of depicting separation or depicting leaving homeland.

That’s why the pace of making has to be what it is. It has to be those long hours. I can’t do shortcuts. At the end of the day, I think it’s like you’ve got to do some things that are hard in life. Like not everything can have an easy button. And if everything does have an easy button, is it really worth doing?

I think nature is critically involved in my way of expressing because nature doesn’t feel like it’s one of those things that belongs to one people, or one person, or one skin color. That is home no matter where you are. If you’re under a tree in Punjab, if you’re under a tree in the Oakland Hills, you’re under a tree.

The Bay Area has become the land where I have started to explore my artistic voice. You know, it’s the place where I first decided that I’m going to give this a try and become an artist. When you’re from multiple homelands, home does exist in more than one place. You belong to many people and many things. You’re not just, you know, the singular person that exists without connection.

I think it’s, like, such a great exercise in the studio to then relate to something that is larger than yourself, and feel small and big at the same time. I consider my job, you know, a privilege to be able to say what I think to the world. I don’t take this lightly at all.

There’s a funny joke in my family where they’ll say, like, “You would have been a good doctor, but you’re a better artist.” So I tried everything else. I ran away from it. But you can’t run away from what your chosen purpose is.

I became an artist, I think, because I had to say things. I had to tell stories that impacted history, impacted the present, impacted the future. I needed a larger sense of purpose. When I did take up this traditional way of making pigments, traditional way of painting, it was more about rooting myself in something larger than myself.

This is a process that my grandmother used to have as a part of the rituals of Diwali. This lampblack pigment is made from combustion, which is when you light the oil, you produce fire, and then you collect the precipitate from that burning flame. I can just remember my grandmother’s hands doing a motion like this. I think hands of grandmothers always feel like these really tender images.

I don’t have much to read that my own grandparents wrote. And they went through these, you know, events, like the 1947 Partition. Like, you know, even going through waves of immigration. And then my own parents have gone through immigration, and then myself also as a 12-year-old who all of a sudden found myself on the other side of the world trying to figure out, well, what is this new place?

I think legacy, especially as a woman, I think legacy is at the forefront of what I do and why I do it. In the painting here at the de Young, I was angry about what was happening in the world during the pandemic. Seeing the funeral pyres that were being lit everywhere in India at the time, and how easily and how quickly we moved on from that.

This painting comes from that question, that why are we not valuing certain lives? The work in the center is that raging of fire, but also that certain fire is there to complete the cycle of life and death. And these women, you know, wearing dupattas, these, you know, elderly ancestors or these guides, where they are saying these are realities of the world. But there are everyday acts of kindness, of presence, of just noticing that are also recommended guidelines.

It’s also something that I hope I can transfer to, like, a 15-year-old girl who walks in to see my work and says, “Oh, this. You know, this looks like what my grandmother would look like. Wait, she’s wearing a dupatta? What, in this space?” And all of a sudden, instantly, that space becomes a room and not a large institution.

I always make work with the goal of somebody seeing it. The circle is not complete until somebody has seen the work. Many times all people will see is just color. But that making of that pigment is so intentional. It takes labor, it takes thought, it takes care. I think this color red is so deeply, physically tied to the story of a woman’s body, whether it’s experiencing things like, you know, menstruation, pregnancies, but also so much violence. Having indigo tied into this really dark history that it’s had in the world, but using it in water and using it as a backdrop many times for, you know, moments of depicting separation or depicting leaving homeland.

That’s why the pace of making has to be what it is. It has to be those long hours. I can’t do shortcuts. At the end of the day, I think it’s like you’ve got to do some things that are hard in life. Like not everything can have an easy button. And if everything does have an easy button, is it really worth doing?

I think nature is critically involved in my way of expressing because nature doesn’t feel like it’s one of those things that belongs to one people, or one person, or one skin color. That is home no matter where you are. If you’re under a tree in Punjab, if you’re under a tree in the Oakland Hills, you’re under a tree.

The Bay Area has become the land where I have started to explore my artistic voice. You know, it’s the place where I first decided that I’m going to give this a try and become an artist. When you’re from multiple homelands, home does exist in more than one place. You belong to many people and many things. You’re not just, you know, the singular person that exists without connection.

I think it’s, like, such a great exercise in the studio to then relate to something that is larger than yourself, and feel small and big at the same time. I consider my job, you know, a privilege to be able to say what I think to the world. I don’t take this lightly at all.