In 2018, still in Chicago, Nanavati learnt of her mother’s sudden passing due to a heart attack. This made her shift her base back to Mumbai, which proved to be a turning point in her artistic practice, as she began focusing her work more on her mother and the ideas of loss and grief. “While on the flight back home, I began writing to her. It was the only way to keep the conversations between her and I going. In the beginning, these were just letters I wrote to her privately,” says the 26-year-old. 

An artwork called Her Brown Shirt, woven with bits of fabric that belonged to Nanavati’s mother

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Nanavati, who had taken a sabbatical from creating art since her mother’s passing, soon began to revisit her most familiar medium of watercolour to transform the letters she wrote to her mother into paintings. “Eventually, I started using items like her clothes as part of the art. She taught me how to crochet, so I incorporated that into the works as well. I’d write some letters in a secret script that I created to communicate with her,” shares Nanavati. For her more recent pieces, she uses a pulp made of some of the letters and structures them into her mother’s garments. Materials like silk, clay, handmade-paper, gesso and even hand sanitisers have made appearances across her work. “When you lose someone, you cherish their belongings forever. My mother’s cupboards were the way she left them, but this way they get a new form,” says Nanavati. 

A piece called Crumples, made of clay and thread

All these works and more are now part of Nanavati’s first virtual solo exhibition titled Letters To My Mother, on art platform Terrain.art that is up for viewing till September 17. “The pieces are in a way letters, even though mane3y of them are embroidered and some are watercolours. Even the paper pulp is a letter for me. The process was more to do with how to continue the conversation with my mother,” she adds. 

Al-Qawi Tazal Nanavati; Mumtaz Nanavati

A common theme that prevails throughout the collection is the idea to keep a loved one alive, transcending the physical form. For Nanavati, adding tidbits of her mother’s imprints in the forms of clothes, letters or skills like crocheting that were passed to her, help  keep her mother’s memory alive. When asked what her mother might have thought of the collection, Nanavati quips, “She would’ve made fun of me for being cheesy, but she definitely would have been happy with it”.  

Till September 17 
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