The work reflects how a diasporic life navigates longing, grief, and its transient state of being. It considers how food and light as two primal sources of life, become mediums in bridging distance between two homes. Since moving abroad, Nareswari has been developing more awareness of these mediums and their quiet capacity to connect place and memory. Their ephemeral yet cyclical nature offers a reminder of hope and continuity. In this work, rice becomes a medium to cope with longing and grief by embodying nourishment, care, and the recurring return of memory. Rice paper, fragile yet resilient, transformed as a carriage of memories, absorbing traces of sunlight like a subtle archive of presence.

To live in a diaspora is to coexist with absence, to learn to live alongside impermanence. The loss of familiarity and the constant act of adaptation form part of this condition. The shifting light changes the experience of the work, acknowledges absence through presence, allowing transience to be seen rather than concealed. Cyanotyped rice papers suspended horizontally at varying heights, create a landscape of fragility and suspension, evoking memories between two homes. Moved gently by air, they mirror the instability of memory and the continuous negotiation of belonging. This subtle movement transforms impermanence into rhythm, an invitation to appreciate and embrace the transient state of life. 

​

It was a part of "Dealing in Distance" Traveling Festival Across Southeast Asia 2026 funded by Goethe Institut.

​