Riya Chandwani’s practice originates from inherited memory — the partition of 1947 carried forward in her family’s history, originally from Sindh, now Pakistan. Her work presses on questions: whose nostalgia is this, whose grief, and what does it mean to inherit a longing for a place you have never known?
The central work takes the form of a Sindhi rilli, spread across the floor, an invitation to look closer. For Riya, the object holds a meaning synonymous with rest, care and companionship. She imagines it accompanying those in transit, opened out to offer rest, then folded back for the long journey ahead. Into its surface she burns patterns, texts in Sindhi, building layers akin to arabesques and constellations. The marks accumulate like memory itself. She draws on personal and historical archives alongside the words of poets and political voices, among them Saadat Hasan Manto and Ayesha Jalal.
Riya holds that the partition never truly ended, that it has continued across time, taking different forms, leaving different wounds. Her works representing windows or gates from traditional Sindhi homes become witnesses of time, abandonment, and host only absence. She wonders whether something designed to let light pass freely between inside and outside might also allow people, in some way, to return to the places they left behind.
The artist thanks Anhad Art Studio, Mumbai, for their support.