My proposed timeline for the project is from January 2025 to December 2025. ‘Smells Like Home’ is rooted in the journey of my father as a 5 year old who was forced to flee from then East Pakistan during one of world’s largest forced migrations, the partition of India in 1947. The work I have covered so far includes collecting and photographing old family archives, writings, sketches, interviewing people to construct the initial structure of the narrative. In the stories I heard there are certain incidents that remind them of their long lost homeland. Having grown up with the term ‘?????????’ ‘udbastu’ (the displaced) and as a second generation immigrant, I aim to narrate the stories of partition from the perspective of a child. My work sheds light on the shared experiences that bind us as a global community. I aim to approach the project by using the scholarship amount to further add to my work, develop my project and bring it to a concluding zone through the following goals. My goals with the scholarship are to: - Produce 10 copies of a 32 page zine. - Prepare one of the exhibits by weaving the stories on my grandmother’s saree. - Visit the 3 major influx points on the India-Bangladesh border and record the soundscape and make 3 distinct images. - Create a short documentary of 6 to 8 minutes reflecting on global refugee crisis. - Produce 7 images based on the sketches made.
