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FOCUS Photography Festival
Mumbai
Email: info@focusfestivalmumbai.com
Arpita Shah (b. 1983, India) is a photographic artist based in Edinburgh, Scotland. With a background in photography and film, she predominantly works in these two mediums exploring themes around culture and identity. Shah has exhibited internationally and has been involved in several Artist in Residencies and community arts projects around Scotland such as Street Level Photoworks, Ankur Arts and on The Albert Drive Project. She was also recently commissioned by Creative Scotland to develop new work for the 2014 International Commonwealth Games.
As an India-born artist based in Scotland, Shah spent an earlier part of her life living between India, Ireland and the Middle East before settling in the UK. This experience is reflected in her practice which often deals with the experience of shifting cultural identities. Shah’s work tends to draw from Asian and Eastern mythology, using it both visually and conceptually to explore the issues of cultural displacement in the Asian Diaspora.
Portrait of Home
Portrait of Home is a collection of photographs of families based in Scotland who also have cultural roots in other Commonwealth countries. This work celebrates Scotland’s links to the Commonwealth, visually representing how migration between these countries has shaped the national and cultural identity of contemporary Scotland.
The series comprises images of families from all over Scotland, and features families from the Shetland Islands, to Stirling and down to Glasgow. Some of them have been settled in Scotland for up to four generations, and others include family members who arrived just in the last few years. Portrait of Home represents the family unit, something which we can all identify and connect with in various ways. Shah herself is India-born and Scotland based, and home is a reoccurring theme in her work. Here she has focused on the family because of its intrinsic connection to one’s sense of what home is, and one’s identity.
Portrait of Home celebrates Scotland’s rich diversity, exploring how it continues to be home to a wide variety of cultures and communities. Each portrait in Shah’s work reveals not only aspects of the sitters and their relationships to each other, but also the experiences and histories these families have shared in Scotland.