First published on Vogue.in in April 2024
“I’m least interested in dressing,” Sheetal Mallar confesses, and I’m still processing her words days later. A crucial part of India’s fashion zeitgeist in the early ’90s, the supermodel was one of the most well-known faces on the ramp and also went on to work with international names like Fendi and Armani. But when Mallar joins me via video call on a sultry Wednesday afternoon to talk about her latest photo project, she is wearing a simple off-white cotton top—proof that her glamorous past is firmly in the rearview mirror. Her smile, however, shines brighter than the sunlight illuminating her curls and it’s clear that the camera still loves her. As for her own lens, it has trained itself on many other faces over the last decade and a half, with her grandmother being a favourite. And it’s this artistic exploration of her maternal relationships that’s the focus of her newest photography exhibition on display at Art Musings in Mumbai until May 11, 2024. Braided, a work that’s been twelve years in the making, is also Mallar’s first self-published photo book and was released at the LA Art Book Fair in 2023. Now, it has launched on Mumbai’s shores alongside the exhibition.
“The whole intention of starting the project was to reconnect with my family. As I lived away for so long, I felt very uprooted. I just wanted to hold on to some kind of memory,” explains Mallar about the genesis of the series. The book includes photos of her maternal grandmother, her home and possessions, Mallar’s drawings and sketches, bits of dialogue between her mother and her, and even Mallar’s “imagination of what my grandmom’s childhood would have been like”, through photos taken on a journey to South India. What started simply as the process of creating a family album culminated in the photo book after her grandmother passed away and Mallar had to consider it a closed chapter.
While this may be her first photo book, Mallar’s photographs have been seen at group exhibitions in the past, with her first solo show, Transients, also being displayed at Art Musings in 2020. Changing gears to go behind the camera after almost two decades in front of it surely must have been a huge change for the artiste, who took up photography in 2011. “I am really enjoying this chapter of my life behind the camera. It feels organic and right.” For Mallar, being in front of the camera feels performative while going behind it turns into an exercise in voyeurism. “In some ways, modelling has helped me understand what my subject might feel, so I am more sensitive when I shoot someone,” she says. Being a part of the modelling industry has affected her perception of beauty as well. “The fashion business teaches you a lot. You understand early on not to take the persona too seriously. With our ever-changing body, I think it’s wiser to redefine what beauty means to us and not fall into the trap of what is perceived as beauty in the outside world.”
While working on this project, Mallar found herself falling in love with each step of the process: deciding what to include and what not to, writing the text, selecting mediums, creating sketches and drawings, deciding on the narrative, selecting the covers, and simply learning from her mistakes. The Covid lockdowns allowed her to sit with the creation for hours to work and relook at it. “Sometimes, different mediums like poetry, drawings or sketches can say things that a photo can’t say. Mixing mediums can be quite beautiful when you want to tell an emotional story. With personal work, you can keep changing it and it’ll never really be right. So one day I told myself, let’s just close it and put it out into the world.”
The photo book takes a close look at memory, loss and ageing through Mallar’s lens, as well as focuses on relationships from our maternal lineage and how all the layers of emotion are ‘braided’ together. The title also alludes to the daily ritual of mothers lovingly combing their daughters’ hair and the connections they form during those morning conversations. “It’s that special time you have with your mom. I remember missing that intimacy, that quiet, that feeling like a baby all over again. So I used hair metaphorically in this book. The braiding ritual is one of the ways of intimacy we experience with our mothers and grandmothers,” she explains.
From a solitary pink comb lying on a bed, to a pile of neatly folded silk saris and even a monochrome image of a lady in a nightdress air-drying her hair in a garden, each photograph conveys a connection to Mallar’s grandmother, allowing the raw emotion to shine through. The photos have a sense of poignancy and serenity all at once, and you can’t help but linger over them. The covers of the book—available in a variety of colours—are made from silk saris that remind Mallar of the lovely drapes she grew up seeing her mother and grandmother wear. “I come from a lineage where everyone dressed up so beautifully. As a child, I was fascinated by the colours of the saris they wore. I went hunting and found these saris and thought they were all so lovely. I’m self-publishing so who’s to say I can have just one cover? I can have five.”
Mallar set out to create a bank of memories of her family, and it ultimately culminated in an exhibition and a book for sale. What’s been her biggest learning through the making of this series? “When you lose a grandparent or see a parent sick, you begin to think of ageing. I’m in my late forties, my body and hair are changing and I’m constantly understanding and admiring how graceful my mother and grandmother were about it. I think ageing gracefully is everyone’s agenda at the end of the day, even the ones who struggle with it.” I nod in agreement, thinking of my own mother who proudly embraced her greys in her thirties and made a mental vow to not stress about my own fifty white strands anymore. “Working on this book has been a grounding experience, a sort of coming of age emotionally. Loss makes you think about ageing and the transient nature of people in our lives,” she concludes. On that note I bid goodbye, only to go digging for a picture of me hugging my late grandmother and missing her warm smile a little more that day. Sheetal Mallar’s work here is done.
Huzan Tata 