किसान आंदोलन (Kisan Andolan): Protest Memories

2022-2023

In October 2020, farmers from Punjab, India, began a mass protest against three unjust farm laws that threatened to accelerate privatization and place corporate control over food systems. What followed became one of the largest and longest protests in modern history, with Indian farmers and diasporic communities across the globe mobilizing in solidarity. After a year of sustained resistance, the protest concluded in November 2021 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi repealed the farm laws. During this period, 726 farmers lost their lives due to violence, illness, and exposure to extreme weather conditions.

Combining slow stitching, quilting, hand and machine embroidery, and natural dyeing processes using tannins, oxides, and rust printing, my work engages the contradictions of care, labor, and cultural memory embedded within the 2020 Indian farmers’ protest. By embellishing overlooked spaces within photographs and embroidering the names of farmers who died, I invite viewers to slow down and bear witness—to question resistance movements, memorialization, and the often-invisible labor of the Global South.

Photo courtesy: Mikey Mosher