The idea of ‘Home’ is an ever-changing concept. What does it mean to be home? For many, home is not a single place, it is a culmination of the communities and cultures you experience throughout your life. Sometimes the search for ‘Home’ can span an entire lifetime, and even then, it may not yield a single definitive answer. Artist Anoushka Mirchandani explores the ideas of home, identity and diaspora in her recent solo exhibition at Yossi Milo, A House Called Tomorrow. Yossi Milo Gallery, located in NYC’s Chelsea district, is known for featuring a range of young artists from around the globe. A House Called Tomorrow draws inspiration from a poem by Alberto Rios. The exhibition consists of thirteen paintings that span across the entire gallery. The series coincides with her recent re-location to New York, marking the start of a new significant transition that echoes her earlier experience of immigrating from India as a young adult. Through autobiographical paintings of herself and her loved ones, she examines how identity, space, and relationships shift across changing socio-political landscapes, linking her family’s history with her present reality.
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Divya Gangwani: I attended your opening at Yossi Milo, and it was clear that everyone in the room was deeply captivated by your work! The paintings seemed to completely fill the space, creating a powerful atmosphere. How did it feel to exhibit this body of work?
Anoushka Mirchandani: It felt so good! I’ve been working on this body of work for almost a year, so it just feels like such a great physical and emotional release to put all the work out in the world. There’s always that moment of anxiety just before the opening. But once the opening starts, it dissipates and you have to surrender to the works being shared with the community after having had them all to yourself for so many months. In this exhibition at Yossi Milo, I wanted to investigate my grappling with privacy, personal boundaries, autonomy, and resilience alongside my desire for connection, intimacy, sisterhood, and touch. The paintings in a way are a visual, cinematic retelling of different moments imbued with personal significance as I sift through the complexities of navigating disparate cultural frameworks and environments.
DG: Your work explores concepts of self-image, intimacy and familial history, and you draw connections between the past and your present life. The poem A House Called Tomorrow reflects on the concept of building a better world. Can you recall the moment you first encountered the poem and what aspects of it stayed with you long after reading it?
AM: Much of my practice for the last few years has been focused on my family history, specifically my matrilineage. I’ve been thinking about displacement, identity, and transience. As I find myself in a place of personal movement, I am investigating what we carry with us in times of change and turbulence. A House Called Tomorrow is hauntingly beautiful to me because it upholds ancestral memory and pays homage to history. It reflects on what you carry within you as you forge ahead, and for me, it is all the women who came before me—my grandmothers, Nani (maternal grandmother) and Dadi (paternal grandmother) and my mother. Alberto Rios also speaks to ideas of resilience and future-building while elevating and carrying through the legacies that shaped us.
DG: There is a remarkable sense of intimacy in your paintings, particularly in Keep Me Warm (2024). The piece draws us into its warm, inviting atmosphere, offering a glimpse into a personal space. With both subjects turned away, seemingly unaware of our presence, the piece evokes a feeling of quiet voyeurism — an impression that we’re witnessing a tender, private moment shared between them. Given the intimate nature of your work, I’m curious — what inspired you to work on such a large scale? Most of the paintings in this exhibition are at least 60 inches. Was this a deliberate choice for this series, or do you generally prefer working on a larger scale?
AM: It evolved naturally. I really enjoy painting at a large scale, especially the sensations of using so much of your physicality to create marks and strokes. Regardless of the scale of the paintings, my work is a study of intimacy. The work is personal and autobiographical, and thus deeply vulnerable. I am always trying to invite you to inhabit an intimate space within my work. It was fascinating how my studio size influenced my practice. My San Francisco studio was a spacious 2,000 square feet. However, when I moved to New York, I had to downsize significantly to a space of less than 500 square feet. At first, it was incredibly frustrating, playing a game of canvas tetris, but the reduced distance between me and the canvas naturally made the paintings feel more intimate, an unexpected development created by the constraints of my studio environment.
DG: That is the one thing about New York — you’re not going to find as much space as you would often like. So finding ways to adapt, create, and keep producing work becomes a crucial part of the process. With your journey from India to the United States in your early adulthood, then your recent transition from the West Coast to the East Coast. Is there a specific place, feeling, or even person for you that encapsulates the essence of home and what makes it so defining in your life?
AM: For many years, home was India where I spent my childhood up till I was 18. Then, home became San Francisco. But when I moved to San Francisco, I initially felt an absence of home — it wasn’t truly ‘home.’ At the same time, India no longer felt like home either, leaving me with a lingering sense of not belonging anywhere, and slowly opening the door to the idea of also belonging everywhere. Our identities become an amalgamation of different cultures and experiences, which led me to question: What is home? For me, it’s not a fixed place. Instead, it’s found in community, friends, family, physical spaces, nature, colors, and scents. Home has no single definition anymore; it’s fluid and ever-changing. This idea resonates with my belief that identity is constantly being reassembled and always in motion. Similarly, home evolves, shifting and expanding as we bring new experiences and people into our orbit. Home is a dynamic space.
DG: Since recently relocating to New York City this year, what’s your favorite hidden gem or favorite spot that has captured your heart and you find yourself going back to all the time?
AM: Right by my studio is The Drama Bookshop, It’s amazing. Every single book is a transcribed play. It’s also a little coffee shop, so you can sit down, grab a drink and hear all these playwrights around you, discussing their stories. There’s an electric buzz in the air of stories being born. It’s really special!
DG: Being South Asian myself, who has moved often, I found your work deeply moving — it resonates with the ongoing search for identity and a sense of belonging many of us experience. In your exhibition statement you touched briefly on the impact of the 1947 partition on your grandparents and their experience during that time. How do their stories influence your artistic narrative today, if at all?
AM: I would say the last three years of my practice were really steeped in my family archive. My grandparents were part of the partition of India in 1947, and we never really talked about it as a family until recently. Something about this topic felt taboo, or perhaps even unknown. The word refugee never existed in my vocabulary in the context of my family. Possibly the partition of India happened when the word refugee wasn’t really contextualized the way it is now.
Given the experience of my grandparents, I wanted to explore the nature of assimilation within my matrilineage — I came to America by choice, but when my grandmothers moved to India, it was a result of forced displacement. Despite this glaring difference, there were striking emotional parallels in our stories of movement and our efforts to adapt to new worlds. For me, at first there was a desire to fit in and be accepted by American society, and it took years to start unpacking this and asking the deeper question: At what cost? What were the costs of assimilation to my cultural identity, my womanhood, and my freedom of expression?
This introspection made me reflect on the cultural costs for my matrilineage as well. I was invested in understanding the journeys of both my grandmothers.
So I started gathering a family archive. I felt like it was my duty to uncover these stories — in a way I had to move through them, making paintings inspired by them and I even made a short film about this familial excavation with a wonderful group of female collaborators. After years of honoring the histories of my matrilineage, my latest body of work feels like it’s surfacing from the archive and taking ownership of my life and my personal experiences.
DG: So many people have been affected by the partition, yet it’s fascinating how little it’s discussed. Considering British colonization lasted over 100 years, I’ve noticed that when I talk to South Asians whose families experienced displacement, many of us are still grappling with what was truly taken from our culture. Alongside your family’s experiences, do you find inspiration in other artists or genres?
AM: I’m inspired by so many amazing artists!
From Alex Katz, Julian Opie, Andy Warhol to Francis Bacon, Matisse; It excites me to juxtapose flat opaque shapes and forms with loose, liberated lines and colors.
I love Jhumpa Lahiri. She has the ability to give such beautiful language to what it feels like to be part of a diaspora. I’ve also been listening to Arooj Aftab. She’s an incredible Pakistani singer and composer, the first Pakistani artist to win a Grammy — she’s phenomenal.
DG: What do you hope for your audience to take away from your work?
AM: It’s important to me as an artist that you don’t have to wear your trauma on your sleeve. I enjoy creating work that is mysterious and seductive, that draws you in. I also think about the anonymity of the work, because I’m interested in people being able to insert themselves in the work and come to the work in five, ten, fifteen, twenty years, every time with a different story from their own personal life and still be able to see themselves mirrored in the work.
Anoushka Mirchandani’s exhibition, A House Call Tomorrow, on view from November 14, 2024 through January 11, 2025, at Yossi Milo, 245 10th Ave, New York, NY 10001; yossimilo.com.
