Shahrazad's Garden

Shahrazad’s Garden (diptych)
Oil on canvas scroll, jute, hemp, cotton, coir and linen ropes
5m x 1.6m each (painting), 1m ropes (total 6m x 1.6m)
2026

Imagining Shahrazad, the narrator of the the 1001 Nights, having a garden she retreats to in her mind every night, a birthplace where stories originate, gather form and agglomerate, from where she pulls her many stories that are drawn out and retold. Her garden is a private sanctuary and cave of wonders inspired by traditions of Indo-Persian painting and yet its scale is immense and immersive, a giant miniature, one that the viewer can also mentally enter since the mother of all stories belongs to all humanity. Glistening waterfalls, rivers and rivulets dripping and draping into pools of milk and rope roots express the sensuality of the night garden [... add more when show is up]