Siddi Quilts

Siddi Quilts is a photographic documentation project stemming from the long term community engagement with Siddi women and understanding the way memory has shaped up the culture, rootedness and most importantly the craft of Siddi Women.

Siddi community is an African diaspora community that has lived through centuries of displacement, migration, marginalisation and cultural erasure. The cruelty of forced migrations is an experienced reality that has alienated them from the language of the community they were part of, the community they were forced to be part of and more significantly from the future generations who are learning the language of economy. This has led to generations encountering erasure of linguistic, tribal and cultural identity.

In such a circumstance, the women of the Siddi Community are able to preserve and continue a Quilt making practice that in its own ways interweaves stories of Homeland. For generations, the women of the community have been passing down skills, memories and wisdom through these quilts that repurpose clothes once worn by them. The Siddi Quilts embody ‘Bricolage’ (Claude Levi Strauss), a pieced together mosaic of scraps, and discarded clothes echoing the experience of belongingness, ownership, and home.