YUKTI V. AGARWAL
(b. 2000)
Nani As Bharat Mata (Mother India), 2025
52 x 49”
Jacquard woven, various yarns
Project funded by RISD Textiles
The first time I saw an old photograph of my nani, I thought she was a Bollywood actress — a familiar face I couldn’t quite place. In the black-and-white print (a gelatin photograph, perhaps), she stands beneath a waterfall in a white sari. Now, she is subdued, worn down, jaundiced by the weight of her old age. In pulling the pixelated image out, I try to archive her past exuberance.
And isn’t that the story of every Indian woman — today or tomorrow?
Nani is Bharat Mata, like every woman who shoulders the nation’s burdens — the family’s burden. Obscured by vignettes of qoutidian life in India, Nani stands strong—yet slightly hunched — within this abstracted flag. Our Bharat Mata.
Co-created with photographer Anant Saraf