About

Artist statement here.

I am an autodidact video artist, filmmaker, oral historian, storyteller and Metaphysician. Born to Sikh immigrants from the Land of Five Rivers (Punjab), I bounce between my hometown of London, Brooklyn, NY and across Northern India. My approach to life is multidirectional, inspired by the different dimensions of human experience. As an adherent of unity consciousness and its more contemporary expression, spiritual ecology, the fundamental goal of my work is to offer a bridge between the seen and unseen, between the tangible and the intangible and in so doing, reassert the presence of divinity and consciousness in every living thing.

My video art, at times confessional, performative and auto-biographical, has been shown at the Invisible Dog Art Center in Brooklyn, NY, the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi, India, at the CIMA symposium in Kolkata, India, the Southbank Centre in London, UK and the Caos Art Gallery in Venice, Italy.  My short films and videos have been screened globally and my memoir writing published in two ground-breaking anthologies as well as in the world wide web. I have been a recipient of a visual arts fellowship at the Blue Mountain Residency and the Creative Interruptions Residency hosted by Preet Nagar in East Punjab, India and am a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (FRSA).

In my former incarnation as a grassroots human rights worker, I co-founded a research collaborative, co-published and contributed research towards numerous public policy reports and conducted participatory action research, oral history, storytelling and self-portrait workshops across the United States.

I am a practitioner of several Metaphysical arts including Tarot, Astrology, Energy, Sound and flower essence therapies. My practice is inspired by ancestorship (who and what came before us), as well as "calling" and "vocation," (what we came to offer and accomplish). I also regularly host lunar-themed gatherings aimed at expanding consciousness by connecting to divine flow. 

Where I'm coming from

A fascination with systems and a desire to understand the order of things led to reading for a degree in Law at Queen Mary, University of London. I took a year off before completing my final year in order to spend time in Havana, Cuba, researching the state of women during the Cuban revolution. This encounter sparked a long term relationship with the island and her people that continues to this day. 

After graduation, I went on to conduct research, mostly qualitative, with international human rights organizations in post-9/11 USA.  As a Human Rights researcher with Amnesty International USA, I monitored the US government's immigration practices as they impacted upon unaccompanied minors seeking asylum. I additionally monitored the human fallout of the United States’ government's War on Terror by gathering testimony of those caught in the net of immigration and law enforcement sweeps.  

I went on to co-found, alongside celebrated attorney and author Andrea J Ritchie, a New York City-based research collaborative committed to engaging the participatory action research model with grassroots organizations. Our work focused on national and international policy and practices that impact upon immigrants, restaurant workers, sex workers, women survivors of intimate and state violence and LGBT people of color survivors of police violence.

It was through this work that I learned to appreciate the power and importance of storytelling and of the need for those relegated to the margins of our society to be heard, in their own voices. I soon began to incorporate video in my work, finding the visual medium a powerful way to reach people and to vision those typically relegated to the fringes of mainstream society.

This work let to the establishment of a video oral history project that explores migration and displacement from the perspective of elder women of the Punjabi diaspora in London, UK. My goal was to create an archive of living histories from a female-bodied perspective and to that end I interviewed over two dozen Punjabi women and community leaders and activists living in West London, many of whom had survived or whose parents and grandparents had survived The Partition of India. A large portion of those video stories now live openly on the World Wide Web.

What I'm up to now

Being a "sensitive" since a young age and realizing that many of the ills that plague humanity have deep roots, I began a journey into Metaphysics. At around the same time, a dear soul friend passed on and in seeking understanding  I found myself shunted fully and undeniably onto the non-linear path, which has become a sort of primary "home" in this world. In my capacity as an intuitive empath, I offer sessions in Astrology, Tarot and Energy work inspired by ancestorship (who and what came before us), as well as "calling" and "vocation," (what we came to offer and accomplish) and centered in the the power of the heart. I host monthly full Moon gatherings in my home which are aimed at opening up to the expansion of consciousness by connecting to divine flow.

The marriage of these various expressions has borne fruit through a blossoming art practice. On the heels of the oral history work I conducted in West London, I created, with my partner, a video art installation inspired by my father’s personal narrative of surviving the Partition of India and remaking home and identity in new lands. The piece, which is staged inside an Indian wedding tent, serves as a nod to the cathartic power of storytelling and the need to create explicitly congregational spaces to deepen healing. It has been installed at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi as well as the Southbank Centre in London.

In the Fall of that same year, I debuted the first of a series of short films that deal with memory and ritual as part of the Decrocher La Lune show at The Invisible Dog in Brooklyn. The work was the outcome of a workshopping process that spanned a full lunar cycle, a container in which to work mindfully with feminine archetypes. From that work I created a diptych single channel video entitled Liminal. Initially inspired by psychic memories of my maternal grandmother, it took on a wider meaning. It debuted in September 2016 at the Caos Art Gallery in Venice, Italy in conjunction with a series of video art by other women artists, centered on the theme of Unbehaust, of being undomiciled, inside and outside, or between spaces.

My diptych single-channel video, Elemental, a commission for the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi which screened in February 2018, is an experimental piece, serving as a meditation upon the Panchtattvas, or five senses, and the cycle of life . The piece represents an explicit embrace of my Metaphysics practice and a more concerted shift into work that it is centered in catharsis.  

In January 2018 I commenced work on 13  Moons which is a video project formed of a series of performative self-portrait style videos in which I explore my relationship with my lunar cycle over a period of 13 lunation. Each month, fueled very much by the visions and sensations I experience during my menses, I created a new video. 

In November 2018, I participated in the Creative Interruptions residency hosted by Preet Nagar in Indian/East Punjab (mere kilometers from the Partition border) and from my time there, have commenced work on a video installation. Pentapotamia: Let us help the hydra clear away the fog is a celebration of the five rivers for which the ancient region of the Punjab is named. 

During the height of the pandemic in the Spring of 2020, I launched the Love Is Storytelling project on love as a force for social and personal change. I ask a diverse grouping of people a series of questions about their relationship to and thoughts on the subject of love. From these interviews, I craft segments for a meditative podcast series as well as a soundtrack for an audio installation. 

Though only an infrequent writer, I was honored to be included in the groundbreaking anthology, Her Name Is Kaur: Sikh American Women Write about Love, Courage, and Faith edited by Meeta Kaur and published in May 2014. And in 2019, I contributed to the Fearless Love: Anthology, Edited by Vikram Kolmannskog & Stefan Storm. I also write periodically for InPlainspeak, a digital magazine on sexuality in the global South.  

I am the principle and founder of a boutique storytelling, video production and project management firm based in Brooklyn NY where I produce, direct, manage and generally have my finger in various commercial and not-for-profit projects.

More about my journey and current focus here.