In my childhood home, we had a living room that we used only for when guests visited. It was the untouched section of the house and featured a Persian-style carpet, cream leather couches, a coffee table covered with a small crochet doily, a dining table with a plastic table protector and four mahogany wall units. It was ‘migrant parent chic’.
These tall wall cabinets had elegant glass cut-out doors, which opened outward, along with drawers and smaller cupboards. These cabinets became our very own museum, holding the antiquities of my family. In them was the accumulation of precious objects, gifts, trophies and memorabilia collected by my parents from the time they were married, in the late 1980s. Preserved behind the glass were objects like my mother’s faux flower bouquet from her wedding, beaded Easter eggs, limited-edition Hungry Jack’s glasses, doilies, toys, small porcelain and brass figurines (mainly from Romania and India), crystalware and glassware, and a crockery set, which would make its yearly appearance at Christmas. I could see how careful and deliberate my parents were in preserving the history they had created together.
From the age of six, I kept a shoe box, in which I stored special objects and memorabilia, under my bed. These items — like awards, receipts and stickers — were things that I wanted to keep safe. I can remember my young mind thinking that I was afraid of forgetting somehow. The items I kept became bookmarks of time and were fragments of the special milestones in my life. I became a collector, a keeper and a protector of these little bits and pieces, similar to my parents, although I had not made that connection until now. I had begun to build my own archive.
Every year I would add to this box. It was my little treasure chest of memories and milestones. Some of the things I accumulated over time included: a key ring from my trip to India; my high school perfume (Britney Spears’ Fantasy); paper stars I had made in my maths class; beads; stickers; medallions and awards from school; letters from my best friend; my Year three public-speaking palm cards; drawings; Yu-Gi-Oh! cards; bhindis; Raksha Bandhan ties; pressed petals from special occasion flowers I had received; and more.
Currently I am working with a variety of family records, with my artistic practice seeking to restore, preserve and even rebuild my own autobiographical archive. My parents created a life from scratch, arriving in Australia with only a single suitcase each, with limited photographs from back home. They had immigrated in the 1980s from India and Romania. My dad was the only family member who came here and my mother became estranged from her family after she married my father. As a result, I grew up isolated from my Indian and Romanian families. I knew from a young age that there was a hole in my heart that I could simply not fill. I struggled when hearing my friends share stories about their time with their grandparents, cousins and extended family because I simply could not have them in my life.
My understanding of Romanian and Indian cultures was imparted to me by my parents in the form of what we ate, what we celebrated, what we wore and what we watched. Stories of back home were shared mostly while we were cooking together, making samosas, rolling out rotis or stuffing capsicums with rice.
While I had the knack of collecting and preserving my own items, I noticed that I could not do the same with the cultural practices that brought joy into my life. Stories that were shared orally and songs and Indian nursery rhymes could not be packed away into a box and stored under my bed. The flavours of my mother’s gulab jamun sweets and the consistency of the dough was something that could only be perfected if it was made frequently. Recipes, stories and songs needed to be repeated and even relearned to ensure they were remembered. Recipes written in my mother’s cookbook needed to be translated into English so that I could continue making them.
Remembering, reciting and practising have become acts of resistance against time and distance. For me, art has become a powerful tool for transforming these practices — which rely on being passed down from one person to another — into something more permanent. Lost family heirlooms are remade, samosa-folding and filling techniques are documented, songs are remembered and sung, and stories are recorded and shared.
Unlike the experience of my mother and father, I am lucky that making art can be my shoebox under the bed.