Tracing lives through windows and staircases: Artists map domestic memory in Hyderabad

A window, a staircase, a worn-out object — ordinary fragments of a domestic life can become something else when viewed through memory. They can hold traces of people, routines and moments long after the original space has changed. This idea of memory as a landscape runs through The River of Many Drops, currently on view. Curated by Aishwarya Suresh, the exhibition brings together Anil Thambai, Dibin Thilakan, Kumaresan Selvaraj, Meghana Gavireddygari, Ratna Gupta and Trespassers Collective, each approaching landscape through lived experience, material and memory.

When home becomes a landscape: memory, architecture and intimacy in The River of Many Drops

For Meghana Gavireddygari, that landscape begins at home. Her practice considers domestic space as an archive of memory, where architecture, relationships and everyday rituals overlap. “For me, home is less a fixed space and more something that stays with you,” she says. “Memories, relationships, and routines come together within an architectural space.” Home, therefore, travels with us. It can exist in the simple intimacy of sitting beside a grandmother over a crossword, sharing tea with a mother or walking with a father. These seemingly ordinary moments become coordinates of memory, allowing a particular feeling of familiarity to survive even after the physical space has changed.

That relationship between architecture and memory becomes tangible through the objects Meghana returns to. The window grills of her childhood home, for instance, became a recurring presence. As a quiet child, she would sit by the window, holding the grills while looking out onto the street. They became, in her words, “a very prominent character” in her work — objects that simultaneously separated the interior from the outside world while making exploration feel safe. Staircases, too, recur in her practice, particularly for the evidence of time they carry. The erosion at the centre of each step becomes a physical record of countless lives passing through.

Her work is not about reconstructing the past as a fixed image. Instead, it explores how memory changes as it travels. “There’s no clear ‘then’ and ‘now’; it’s more like ‘always’,” she says, describing the way personal and inherited memories remain intertwined within domestic spaces. The home becomes an early blueprint through which we learn to understand the world — the first window, door or chair giving meaning to the words themselves.

Dibin Thilakan approaches this terrain through material, the human figure and memories of home, family, care, labour and vulnerability. His work, like Meghana’s, begins with the intimate but reaches towards something collective. “My work begins with the intimate, but I hope it does not end there,” he says. Once personal memories enter the work, he believes, “they are no longer entirely mine.” Instead, the viewer brings their own histories into the encounter.

That exchange lies at the heart of the exhibition’s river metaphor. Anil’s architectural landscapes, Kumaresan’s explorations of elevation and depth, Ratna’s internal landscapes of memory and rest, and the shared gestures of Trespassers Collective each form their own drop within the larger current.

For Dibin, the river is ultimately about recognition rather than resolution. “Not everyone carrying the same story, but many different stories meeting, touching and continuing to move together.” In Meghana’s work, the architecture of home becomes a map of what remains within us. Together, their practices suggest that landscapes are not simply places we inhabit — they are places that inhabit us.

Free entry. On till Oct 4. At Srishti Art Gallery, Jubilee Hills.

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