(re)Crafting the Self

(re)Crafting the Self, work rooted in (re)connecting with Indian heritage through tactile engagement with physical cultural artifacts, challenges the mythology that diasporic identity must be singular to be valid, and asks how design can be utilized as a tool for identity reconciliation. Through arts-based inquiry, (re)Crafting the Self explores how tactile engagement and embodied knowledge, working with and through cross-cultural artifacts, can externalise, elucidate, and often soften tension, proposing a new lens for holding the complexity of identity in integration, multiplicity, reverence, and relational coherence.

(re)Crafting the Self, here pictured with the source material and inspiration, a Gujarati cookbook written by my great-great-grandmother, against the same fabric that lines the inside of (re)Crafting the Self.

(re)Crafting the Self, open box, showing shuffled contents of the box after public interaction.

(re)Crafting the Self, paperback version

(re)Crafting the Self, paperback version. Still an unbound book, here gathered with a scrap of repurposed sari fabric from India.

Spice sheet paper mâché

Excerpted 3 of 12 total spice sheets. Paper mâché of spreads of my great-great-grandmother's cookbook incorporating spices foundational to Gujarati cooking.

12 bowls

12 paper mâché bowls made using spreads from the cookbook my great-great-grandmother wrote, and incorporating foundational Gujarati pantry spices into the paper mâché batter, and the circular shape representing the traditional round spice dabba in Indian kitchen. The bowls are arranged in a circle around the cookbook they are made from.