Making Home: Exiles – The Ugandan Asian Story
The sari is seen as a marker of identity, of authenticity, conformity, and tradition. Through the design of the sari and installation I am presenting the traditional sari with patterns reflecting the journey, the memories and aspects of British Ugandan Asian life, 50 years after expulsion. I look at the Sari not in its material form but the way in which it both veils and reveals, adorns and disrupts and signifies.” – Neishaa Gharat
A presentation of personal histories and a study of resettlement, Making Home offers a unique and poignant peek into a widely unexplored piece of British history: the exile and subsequent resettlement of Ugandan Asians in 1972.
The Exiles Project
To document the plight of these deportees and commemorate the 40th anniversary of their English establishment, The Exiles Project – an initiative supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and facilitated by The Council of Asian People in partnership with Amphora Arts and Collage Arts – sought to construct a collection of oral histories. The research compiled through this year-long project materialised in Making Home, an exhibition on display at both Kensington’s Royal Geographical Society and the Wolfson Gallery at the School of Oriental and African Studies – whose students facilitated and compiled the project’s oral history archive – in September 2013.
Neishaa Gharat’s Textile Installation
In order to document and explore the resettlement of 27,000 Ugandan Asians in the United Kingdom, Making Home featured photographs, authentic artefacts, interviews, and art – including Neishaa Gharat’s Five & Half Metres: The distance travelled to return to origins.
Suitable for dress but curated as a beautiful piece of art, the sari acts as a visual representation of the oral accounts, incorporating details from the stories: a patch of flowers in the centre symbolise Uganda’s lush environment, whose sweet-smelling flora embodied paradise; an intricate design alludes to jewellery, a manifestation of identity, memories, and a hope of returning home to deserted belongings; and a black-and-white checker print, representative of a woollen jacket, captures the relative gloom of the United Kingdom.
Viewers were invited to touch the sari, elevating it from aesthetic object to interactive display and enabling a greater understanding of both its artful construction and delicate composition.
Meaningful Research
To conceive and create this tailor-made piece – and to execute the exhibition – both Neishaa Gharat and The Council of Asian People conducted extensive research in the archives of multiple locations: the National Archives, the Royal Geographical Society, and the School of Oriental and African Studies.
By combining aesthetic objects of culture with detailed narratives, both The Exiles Project and its Making Home offshoot transcend typical methods of storytelling to illustrate – and, ultimately, commemorate – the expulsion and resettlement of Ugandan Asians in the United Kingdom.
