My Shrine Elegy:

Beautifully constructed temples,

Adorned with ornaments and statues dating back generations,

Intertwined with mythology so detailed and timeless.

A culture so dense and immaculate

An exquisitely designed box

made of glass,

so one can look inside

to appreciate its beauty.

Creating a disconnect.

Identity is embodied

within a person.

Mine is a fusion of

every culture

It’s confusing.

It’s globalized.

It’s different,

from my parents

from my relatives.

And I’m okay with that.

Like a lotus that finds beauty

in muddy waters,

I find beauty

in my loss.

My Artist Statement

I decided to make my shrine memorializing my loss of culture. In order to represent that I had to make a “beautifully constructed temple” which embodies just the overall beauty of my culture and religion. I used colorful patterns which are iconic to the Hinduism tradition and art, it’s all collaged to show a “packed” feeling because the religion itself is packed with mythology and tradition dating back to 500 BC; I used aluminum foil to provide a more “reflective” feeling to make it more personal.

The whole temple represents the “exquisitely designed box” that I talk about in my elegy. How if you look at the whole religion from an outside perspective its just this beautiful artifact, just like a lot of other old traditional customs. A “traditional” way of thinking doesn’t necessarily have to have a positive connotation, in fact most of the time we associate it with negativity. I’ve left that part of me behind, I no longer have that old traditional mentality, I don’t believe fairness is associated with beauty, I don’t have to marry another Indian man in my caste through an arranged marriage, I don’t have to be a housewife and I don’t have to be constantly repressed by either my parents or another male dominant figure in my life.

Another important symbol in my temple is the lotus, which essentially sums up my entire thought process perfectly. A lotus itself is symbolic to how good things can result from bad situations because they grow in muddy water. I folded my baby photos where I am celebrating festivals when I lived in India into a lotus flower and placed it at the bottom of this in-scent holder, also in the shape of lotus to represent the burning away of the tradition.