How to believe the house you wake in is your home.

“I think that, at the heart of all my bodies of work there always lies the sense of belonging. Whether it is in this land, whether it is within yourself and also within the day-to-day routines.”

Words: Dan Charles

Not long after leaving her studio in Woodstock, my phone buzzed with a barrage of texts from the artist Alka Dass. She had sent me an assortment of screenshots and links to all of the poems that we had spent a good portion of the afternoon gushing over while drinking multiple pots of tea, sharing a packet of cheap biscuits that failed their packaging’s attempt to pass themselves off as macaroons from the corner store next door and listening to jazz records that punctuated the passage of our conversation with every time the needle called for Side A to be flipped over to Side B. One of the links was to a poem called “What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade” by Brad Aaron Modlin that reflects on what might have been taught alongside the lessons of a typical school curriculum if children were given tools to fortify a sense of mindfulness and emotional wisdom that might be more useful later in their adult life than, say, maybe algebra. The poem imagines lessons such as finding meaning in ordinary acts such as pumping gas and peeling potatoes; learning how to remember the voice of a loved one; and understanding that the words "I am" is a complete sentence. One of the lessons that stuck out to me in particular was the lesson of “how to believe the house you wake in is your home” which I think might just be a similar lesson that Alka tries to teach the viewer and herself through her art.

Over our first pot of tea and while the voice of Sarah Vaughn floated in the background, I asked Alka if she ever has any worries about how her art might be perceived. I knew that it was not a particularly interesting or insightful question (most artists, whether they care to admit it or not, surely feel a bit anxious about putting their work out into the world and risk having its meaning or perception polluted by the unwarranted opinions of people hunched over keyboards like me) but I was curious because of the particularly personal nature of Alka’s work that takes old photographs of her family and translates them into explorations of identity and belonging - particularly amongst Indian South African woman and the history attached to their heritage. Some artists are able to put a lot of distance between themselves and their work. Alka does not. She cannot. And she does feel the weight of that.

Alka Dass, 27 of cups

“I think because I am working with memory and I'm working with oral histories that aren't necessarily written because there's not much written on Indian indentureship in South Africa - although I think it's become more popular recently, which is amazing but I also feel like it's a bit stuffy, because it's coming from the side of timelines and history in a very academic sense, but we don't get to have the real feel. A lot of the pictures that I used were pictures taken in my family's homes in Cato Manor before the race riots and before the Group Areas Act and I mean, I've read stuff on it, but actually listening to my Nani, who lived in that area with her in laws makes it very different, because I'm hearing about someone's first-hand experience versus what I'm reading online somewhere by some academic who's probably never experienced that. It's like the one side is very emotional, very fragile, very delicate - she’s talking about something that's literally happened to her, something that she witnessed she couldn't do anything about - as opposed to just dates and times. So I am quite scared and feel quite vulnerable about how that's perceived, because I'm taking these bits of information that was told to me by someone who I absolutely love and adore, and I'm trying to also translate that in my own visual language and trying to be sensitive to the topic.”

Of course, academia does play an important role in documenting the facts of such a historic event but perhaps the forced removal of the nearly 100,000 residents of Cato Manor (an area that, from 1914, comprised of land that was subdivided and sold predominantly to Indian market gardeners who had recently released from indentured labour contracts on sugar plantations surrounding Durban) in 1959 is maybe lesser known today than the forced removals of residents of Sophiatown and District 6, because there aren’t as many stories that have been told of it to document the feeling of the immense loss that was felt and how the legacy of that loss would be passed down generation after generation. 

“I don't think there are a lot of South African Indian artists that are put on the spotlight to actually talk about these things. Or, I mean, it's also very difficult, because we are not technically of this land and so how do you tell this history without trying to seem entitled? Like, how do you say that ‘I’m of this land’, when you're not of this land. But a lot of my family's ancestors were indentured labourers, so they knew the land so well. A lot of them were farmers and agricultural workers so they loved the land so much. Like my Nani’s father worked on a pineapple plantation and a tea plantation, and his father, and his father before that, and his father before that, worked on sugar cane plantations. She always talks about, he had, like, this really beautiful, lush garden, because he just knew how to tend to plants really well. So they had guavas, they had avocados, they had pineapple, mangoes and lychees, like all the delicious tropical food that you can get from the Durban soil. So it is strange, because it's not your land, but you've become so entwined with it, with your life and your ancestors before you attending to that space in that garden, but it has never really been yours.”

After she had finished high school, she and her family visited India to try to find the village where her ancestors had come from only to discover that everyone who tied them to that village had gone on the ships and so there was nobody left behind. While there, people would ask her where she was from and, when she said that she was South African, they would then ask her where she was really from, and, when she said that she was from India, they would say that she’s not really of this country.

“It feels weird because I grew up in a very, very strong cultural home where we would practice our culture, and my whole family speaks Hindi, and you know, we do the day to day activities that you would do in a normal Indian home in India. So it felt very strange to be told that you’re not really an Indian and then being here and feeling inherently quite South African, but then not being a native here.”

Just like in Brad Aron Modlin’s poem, there is no lesson in school that teaches young children born having inherited the displacement and the legacy of diaspora passed on by their ancestors how to feel as if they belong to land that they were born to and have known their whole life, as well as the land that their families were born from and that they never got the chance to know. So, in 2021, Alka started teaching herself how to work with cyanotype printing – a photographic process that was invented in 1842 as a method for initially reproducing mathematical and technical drawings, leading to what became known as blueprints due to its distinctive Prussian blue colour. When one thinks of blueprints, one tends to think of the construction of buildings and so, in a way, Alka’s use of cyanotype serves as a means of her becoming something of an architect, laying out the designs for a house that she can call her home, and this home would be built upon a foundation of photographs taken within and around the homes that her family has made in the past, fortified with moments that might seem mundane or not very significant but that do carry a tremendous depth of meaning and beauty in the way that we, the viewer, can share in and relate to these moments. 

“I mean, these are pictures taken in people's homes. Some family members just took a picture because they found a camera. Nothing staged, people were just laughing in the kitchen, cooking and then a picture taken. So it's like all these little glimpses into these lives that have happened that everybody can associate themselves with, or see, put their lens on and be like: ‘Wait, I've had this similar experience.’ It's not reinventing the wheel, but it is a beautiful thing of recognising oneself, which is what I really enjoy. And again, that sense of belonging and realising: ‘Hey, I'm weird, but this person is also weird, and I can recognise myself in this even though I don't know them.’”

Alka’s process of translating these photos into her work is a laborious one. Cyanotype is typically printed onto paper whereas Alka prints onto material that requires additional care and attention in how it is stretched in order for the image to transfer over as clearly as possible. Once translated onto the material, Alka will spend hours arched over these images as she intricately beads and embroiders imagery such as flames onto them that reference the rituals and prayers of Hindu culture as well as tie her work to the lineage of women throughout her family who have worked as seamstresses as well throughout their lives.

“I think the practice itself of weaving these things are quite labour intensive, but they're also quite meditative. So you're not, it's not sporadic. It's very like meditative. It's very like cathartic. You're going in and out of something constantly. So it does give you, really, what is it, peace of mind. At the heart of all the work is belonging but also labour plays a large part of it. The work is very labour intensive but it's looking at people and the lives that they've lived. I mean, yes, it's my family, but I mean, most of my family members have only just worked, very blue collar, like laborious tasks as well. So it's like, how do you reiterate this into something that can be, maybe not perceived, but acknowledged?”

How the lives lived within these photographs are honoured is through the immense consideration and care that Alka takes in sharing their stories, and care does require labour in the way that bell hooks explains that love is an action. And there is a tremendous amount of love present in Alka’s work just as there is in the home that she has made for herself in her studio that she is more than happy to share with anyone who stops by to visit it. 

@alka_the_artist