Absent
presence

If we had rooms of our own draws imaginaries of personal space by six Hindu mothers who live in Karachi, a predominantly Muslim, Pakistani metropolis. I asked these women to describe a desired room inside their homes that was designed only for them. The project gathers longings for that ‘room of one’s own’ by Hindu mothers who live in a place that pushes them into the shadows as members of a minority community, as women, and as mothers. My project is sited in the homes of these mothers, where home, assumed to belong to women and often described as ‘women’s domain’, paradoxically leaves little room for them.

The audio and drawings shared here were made in a slow and intimate process of connection facilitated by WhatsApp, between Pakistani women living in Karachi and Guilford, CT (Hindu in Karachi, Muslim, me, in Guilford). My role as an artist was to listen, edit together, draw and redraw the minutiae of rooms described by these mothers in multiple voice notes until they were happy with my final iterations of pencil on paper. The drawings were then shipped and hand delivered to the mothers in Karachi by Ammara and Suman.

Compiled on our website, you will find the edited voice notes, the final drawings, and the documentation of those drawings in their intended homes photographed by the mothers in Karachi.

Listening to and drawing these imaginary rooms defined a process of making space for the distinct desires of caregiving women. It was an opportunity to build solidarity with marginal figures who disappear both behind the many facades of Karachi, and beneath the endless labors of homemaking. It was also a reflection on Virginia Woolf’s well known 1929 essay, that seems valid 96 years later, pointing to the absences and inequities, even within domestic space, which persist to this day. To draw the minutiae of a room of one’s own then is an exercise in solidarity; as we seek traces of ourselves in our imaginary rooms, we also find them in the desires and longings of others.

In Karachi—a city where public space increasingly reflects dominant narratives—the presence of Hindu temples tells a quieter tale: one of endurance, resistance, and belonging. Temple run is a digital mapping project that traces ten such temples across the city, which is predominantly, and often overwhelmingly, Muslim. Ranging in age from 80 to 1,500 years, these temples carry the aspirations and longings of a minority community that continues to persist.

Using panoramic imagery, the project records the affective and symbolic value of these sacred spaces. It explores how each temple interacts with its surroundings—how it meets the sky and the ground, the street and the courtyard, the other and the self. The sky suggests aspiration, divinity, and visibility; the ground carries memory, belonging, and weight. As the panoramic unfolds, temples are increasingly boxed in by the city—until the sky and ground are lost, and only fragments remain.

As a Hindu woman from Karachi, navigating complex layers of caste, class, and gender, Priya has long relied on discretion and invisibility to move through the city. These tools—expressed in language, attire, names, and symbols—also shaped how she approached these temples and used the camera: carefully, respectfully, and often invisibly.

In public view, the temples appear cautious and subdued in ways unique to their neighborhood. Some are painted white, others are closed boxes. A few are canvases for graffiti; others are barricaded and guarded. But on the inside, they come alive—unapologetic in their simplicity, warmth, and sensorial richness. The panoramic sequence echoes this tension. It begins with an open sky and steady ground, and gradually loses both, as the city presses in. What remains are fragments—a tree, an aperture, a garland, a tulsi—small gestures of resilience and sacredness amid a rapidly vanishing space.

Temple run invites you to reflect on what it means to remain—quietly but stubbornly—in spaces that no longer claim you as their own.