Aninda Verma | Debashree Das | Mahima Kapoor | Prerna Scaria | Ruchika Wason Singh | Shyamali Haldar | Sonal Varshneya
One Home, Many Nests brings together the practices of artists who are also mothers, reflecting on how motherhood has gently, and sometimes profoundly, reshaped their artistic journeys, opening new directions while interrupting the linear trajectories often expected of an artist’s career. Artists Aninda Varma, Debasree Das, Ruchika Wason Singh, Prerna Sharma, Mahima Kapoor, Shyamali Haldar and Sonal Varshneya through their individual experiences of struggle, discovery and persistence, share the many ways of continuing to create while making room for the demands and joys of motherhood.
Aninda Varma’s ceramic works, resembling clusters of banana flowers, speak to the shifting rhythms of her practice and the many responsibilities and heaviness that accompany motherhood. Sonal Varshneya’s series in etchings with marble inlay trace her evolving relationship with her daughter, as well as with herself. Debasree Das’s paintings explore motherhood alongside the enduring presence of patriarchy, reflecting on the challenges of reclaiming space for oneself and the quiet solidarity that emerges when women hold space for one another.
Works by Prerna Sharma and Ruchika Wason Singh, created when they were new mothers, offering a glimpse into moments of personal and artistic transition from over a decade ago. Prerna’s painting, with its warm yellow glow, evokes the tenderness of self-love and the often-elusive gift of time for oneself. Ruchika’s non-figurative works was an intuitive graduation
towards a parallel world in her garden, which too had germination and the processes of evolution, became her method to depict the emotional pulsations of the partum stage in her life. Shyamali Haldar returns to exhibiting after a long pause shaped by motherhood. Working with her daughter’s old toys, she transforms familiar objects into sculptural forms, finding new possibilities for making within the materials of everyday life. Mahima Kapoor’s iron sculptures, meanwhile, explore the uneven trajectories of motherhood through a material that holds both strength and malleability, resisting the pressures placed upon women by society.
Together, these practices reconsider the many ways an artistic life can continue to grow, even when its path does not follow a straight line. Looking at pauses and gaps in an artist’s career are not necessarily moments of absence or inactivity; they can also hold forms of learning, care and lived experience that quietly shape the work. One Home, Many Nests thus creates a space for these intertwined experiences to be seen and held with care. It reflects on the expectations placed upon women as mothers and artists, while recognizing the many ways they continue to nurture their practices alongside their families.
