Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence, Master of Photography sponsored by Kayell Australia.
NAVA Ignition Award for highest performing in Profession Practice.
Seventh Gallery Award.
ALL THAT REMAINED ARE MEMORIES: a photographic exploration of Home, Family and Material memory to reclaim my refugee self-identity
All that remained are memories photographically narrates my lived experience of growing up in a refugee household affected by the Partition of India through intergenerational memory and material culture. This site specific installation recognises numerous micro-histories within my own family by aesthetically fusing found family archival photographs along with present-day documentary photographs of my ancestral home and my family in India. The series also features 3D renders of family heirlooms holding significant memories of my familial history that got lost within colonial archives.
The poetic arrangement of these photographs along with digitally rendered objects is my feeble attempt to preserve and reconstruct the home from my childhood memories that my grandparents and my parents built. Through the act of making photographs with my parents and my brother I intend to investigate the role of family photography as a memory-keeping medium to document potential histories within refugee family. In this context, photography serves as a means to facilitate intergenerational healing, providing an opportunity for reconciliation between my family’s history and my contemporary self identity.
instagram: @raghavkumaaar