Colour of Saudade is Blue

How do you express something you don't understand? How do you express something you are scared to explore? How do you create images from thoughts, emotions and feelings that are tangled in ways that cannot be explained?

This project led me into a journey through all these questions. I lost my father about three years back, and while the world has moved, sometimes it deeply feels that life is exactly where it was the last time I saw him.

The Colour of Saudade is Blue is an exploration of a daughter’s grief, my grief for my father. The project started as an exploration of the longing felt after his passing away, and the senses of smell, touch, sight that still helps me feel his presence closeby. One of my favourite things to do around Baba was wear his shirts,kurtas and sweaters. To me it always smelled of comfort and love. It is this that became the language of expression for my grief, his clothes, things he loved wearing, things he loved carrying, things in which I love carrying him forward.

This is an ongoing body of work that seeks to change as grief changes forms, it is a daughter's way of sitting with everything that lingers and is left behind. It is a way of feeling a fathers presence even in his absence. To me, if grief had a colour it would be the blue, sometimes the dark deep blue of night, heavy with emotions and sometimes the dawnish blue full of all the hope and joy. This project is a meandering of memories, moments where his presence is felt, and moments where it is missed.