This work is from the artist’s “My Mappa Mundi” series. Concerned with the inherent transience of place, Piyaali creates her own memory maps tracing her migration and observes transformations in the landscapes of the places she has called home. The painting is inspired by Gaston Bachelard’s book, *Poetics of Space*, and a poem from Rabindranath Tagore’s *Gitanjali*. The painting contemplates migration, the nature of memory, the space for remembrance and reflection, resilience in adapting, creating a sense of belonging, and assimilating to new homes while retaining the cultural memory of the old world, oneness and interconnections of all.
Rabindranath Tagore’s song 63 from Gitanjali is written on the painting. The lines resonated with the artist’s personal immigrant experience and spiritual belief in oneness. “Thou hast made me known to friends whom I knew not. Thou hast given me seats in homes not my own. Thou hast brought the distant near and made a brother of the stranger. When one knows thee, alien there is none.”
The artist merges the aerial photographs she took of California landscapes where she lives and merges them with drawings she made of her ancestral home. She incorporated writings from Gaston Bachelard’s book, Poetics of Space, on memories, especially of childhood homes.
Material: Acrylic, photographs taken by the artist, thread on canvas. Size: 36” by 36”