‘Join’ (2024) is a commissioned artwork at the Mela Festival in Southampton as part of the John Hansard Gallery’s project ‘Co-Creating Public Space’.

Working alongside Permindar Kaur and Ren Wooldridge, we held a series of workshops with local South-Asian Community groups, bock printing traditional Indian patterns onto fabric. These collaborative efforts helped create the collage fabric tapestry, stretched over a frame within a tent-like structure.

The two chairs in the foreground, covered in Velcro, were left incomplete, with visitors of the Mela Festival invited to take part in similar workshops to block print their own patterns to be stuck onto the chairs, finishing the artwork.
The series of collaborative workshops helped aid the process of creating this installation, with the community at the heart of its fabrication. Visitors were encouraged to sit on the chairs and interact with the piece, taking part in conversations surrounding home, belonging, and the importance of cultural identity,