Amma/Pilla

Amma/pilla is a letter to my mother, regarding our strained relationship since I have come out to her as a transgender person. Through the process of cyanotype—experimenting, developing, revising—I wrote in our shared tongue of Telugu to express how this makes me feel. This work touched upon queer-trans relationships, pain, and resolve, grounded in the belief that queer-trans people need to speak about the pain of exclusion that is so often individually mitigated.

Drawing from the concept of embodied cognition, I considered the viewing experience of someone engaging with a work in a language they don’t understand. While the meaning of the words are foreign, the sounds are familiar. Combined with the visual textures of the shades of blue, the shredded gauze, and the handmade letterforms, the viewer is able to ‘sound out’ an understanding of the work on their own, encouraging them to engage in an exercise not