Acutely gendered, home-making is an unending, tedious exercise; intrinsic to which is the act of inhabiting. The designing of domestic spaces is a deeply intimate experience, but what is the political-economy of the every day in which these intimacies are formed? More so, how are these experiences engineered in an unfamiliar metropolis for migrant women?

Richa’s current project “Now That I am Here/This My Home” is an attempt at re-telling lived narratives of women in and around Khirki village navigating dualities of spaces, and roles as outsiders in a city. Not only are most of them home-makers, but also entrusted with sustenance, and earning livelihood for their families. Space is an unaffordable luxury, and one finds families of four living in crowded single-room apartments. Regardless, homes are also spaces organised assiduously with careful thought keeping in mind both their utilitarian and aesthetic value. They are, then, an insight not only into the material histories of the women inhabiting them, their relations beyond the space with the metropolis at large, but also their hopes and aspirations in life. Despite the unwieldy raggedness, there is a delicate sense of temporality- of moving across and leaving behind to their thoughts, and womanhood at large which finds congruence with my medium. It is relentlessly folded, stitched, beaten, cut, and managed, yet it never breaks much like the countless criss-crossing, overlapping experiences of being a woman.

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