We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Shweta Bist. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Shweta below.

Alright, Shweta thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

Certainly! Thanks for having me! My current and ongoing project, The Fragility of Time, is guided by emotionality and intuition and is especially close to my heart. When I started the series, I was chasing an unsettling anxiety that began to creep in when my younger child turned eight. Amidst the two girls’ growing independence, I struggled to recalibrate from being their world to becoming a part of it. Despite having more freedom, I experienced a sense of being adrift.

I found myself reckoning with the impermanence of all things in this world, with aging and mortality. Perhaps this was triggered by the death of a friend close in age to me. Or perhaps by the realization that my daughters’ clock is keeping my time. Or both. Having prioritized my family’s needs over mine for several years, I felt compelled to search for myself anew.

The pictures in this series are glimpses of reflection and rediscovery in midlife. I celebrate my daughters blossoming femininity, commemorate my waning fertility and mourn the loss of loved ones while recognising the temporality of the human experience. I employ color to convey emotion and symbolisms from nature, popular iconography, and art history to represent ideas and attributes in the compositions. Although told from my perspective, ultimately, this is a narrative of love— for life, for one’s children… and oneself.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Yes, sure. I was born in Delhi, India, to middle-class working parents. Although artistically inclined from a young age, my career choice was guided by what was more acceptable and expected in the environment where I grew up. I am a postgraduate in Commerce and have worked in finance and manufacturing in Delhi and later in Dubai, where I gave birth to both my daughters.
My husband and I moved to New York City in early 2013 when the girls were little- one was three years old, and the other a baby of eight weeks. I quit my office job when the older one was born, and continued to stay home after the birth of the second. I wanted to be there for the girls in their infancy and early childhood years, but other reasons such as inadequate maternity leave, expensive child care, and lack of familial support made it the only viable option.

Although I had imagined being back to full-time paid work one day, I did not anticipate how hard that could be. Or that years of putting others first could erode my self-confidence or how challenging it would be to re-integrate myself into the workforce after a long hiatus. But something wonderful happened as well. I started taking pictures, and it became cathartic for me—a means to meditate and find myself.

It had been four years since our move to New York. And although I was taking pictures in stolen moments in between various domestic responsibilities, I wanted to do more to regain a sense of autonomy. I started to research MFA programs but discovered that with the cost of childcare added to the tuition, I would be looking to spend way more than I could afford, based on an inability to predict the remuneration from an art career. So I signed up for weekly evening classes at the School of Visual Arts. At the same time, I started taking freelance photography assignments at modest sums.

After about two years, Covid happened. A month into it, I felt like I was back to the days of my oblivion. The lockdown became reminiscent of an earlier time when caring for my family had inadvertently eroded my sense of self. So I took it upon myself to be creative no matter what. I collaborated with my daughters on a photo series staged inside our apartment. Covidity is a visual record of our curiosities and conversations over the countless hours we spent together as we navigated this trying time in our symbiotic lives. The children and I were really just playing… and it changed everything.

Although I started with making staged portraits of the girls to document their feelings and intellectual leanings during their time at home, the imagery progressed to include my experience of mothering during the pandemic. It became evident that I had to tell stories from the mother’s perspective. To make artwork about the mother, whose work and world are often taken for granted and vastly overlooked. That project was the beginning, and there has been no looking back since.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Well, I was raised in a deeply religious and patriarchal society. It can be said that the circumstances were oppressive for women. In many instances, they were kept from living full lives and from self discovery.

I learned to be a human giver. To devote myself to my family, even if at the expense of achieving my personal goals. To fear God, to follow the rules, to honor and obey my elders, even if they were wrong or misguided. I grew up in a city that was, and is still considered unsafe for women. Looking over my shoulder was second nature for me.

Before I became a mother, I did not know what challenges it would bring. All the mothers I knew always seemed content and happy. Even today, mothers are expected to always be pleasant, to keep personal hardships to themselves, to not complain or stir the pot. The reality is that a lot of what is expected of women and mothers is culturally enforced. But the maternal experience is an ambivalent one— there is love, but also a loss of the self. Capitalism and patriarchal economic systems do not value care work, leaving many mothers feeling diminished. Since the burden of care work falls mostly on the shoulders of women, raising a family often sets them back in their careers.

Upon becoming a mother and looking after my daughters, I was led to confront my past. To ensure that I raise them to be strong women, I had to unlearn several things I was taught intentionally or learned inadvertently- that women are less valuable than men, that they must not express their desires freely, that menstrual blood is impure, that any attack on a woman’s modesty is her fault, that mothers must devote themselves to their family’s needs and care work is a gender-specific responsibility, that (m)others that stay at home are not ‘working’, that mothering does not require intelligence, that (m)others are always happy, that their stories are not worth telling.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Oh, yes. I love a good story and have always been interested in the stories of women, especially mothers. I am committed to telling stories about maternal subjectivities, to visualize what it feels like to be a woman and a mother in contemporary culture, in turn attributing value to care work.

Another one of my endeavors is to promote and support the work of other artist-mothers by curating shows with galleries committed to supporting women’s and (m)others rights with the understanding that this is foundational to any prosperous society.

My motivations stem from the need to resist the oppressions of the institution of motherhood as defined by patriarchy, raise empowered daughters, emphasize the values of care, and tell authentic stories about the lives of women and their children.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.shwetabist.com
• Instagram: @shweta.photo
• Facebook: @shwetabistphotography
• Linkedin: Shweta Bist