Photography, Kantha embroidery and Bengali typography all come together in Melbourne artist Abhijit Pal’s exhibition Chordi (Bengali for ‘elder sister’) at the Kingston Arts Centre.
Featuring eighteen photographic works, each roughly 42 cm by 60 cm, the exhibition is Pal’s first solo work in Australia since he arrived here in 2023.
And yet, for all the talk about mainstream connection, accessibility, and bridging cultures, Pal chose to make his debut with a deeply personal statement.
“This show is not for anyone,” he told Indian Link, in quiet rumination. “This is only for my sister. If she can see it, I will be happy.”
The emotional core of Chordi began in an abandoned ancestral house in India. “I visited my maternal uncle’s home in 2024, now sitting empty,” Pal recounted. “Camera in hand, I photographed as I always do, almost reflexively.”
Compositions were far from his mind, he says, amused at how people now praise the framing. At the time though, it was not about art. It was documentation. Archiving. Nostalgia.
Back in Australia, those photographs stayed in a hard drive. Then one day, his sister sent him an old childhood photo, taken in the same place, the same backdrop of memory. It brought back stories.
“Slowly, with time, our childhood stories are becoming a blur,” Pal lamented. So he started writing – in his native Bengali (Bangla).
“The Bangla phrase holds a particular depth for me, the kind that does not fully travel in translation, but still reaches,” he explained.
Somewhere between writing and sketching, the idea arrived: what if the photographs could hold the marks of that shared childhood with his sister – not as a clean, adult narrative, but as something messier, playful, and tender?
And so, stitch entered the project, binding it all together, as it were.
Early years in Australia
When Abhijit Pal arrived in Australia, it was not with a grand “artist relocation” plan. It was, in his words, a simple thought: his wife would finish her PhD, they would explore, and understand what Australia has to offer.
Pal remembers walking into the art spaces and feeling stunned by the ecosystem. “I said to myself, wow, the art scenario is here really super,” he revealed. And then came the migrant ambition: “We thought, okay, let’s take some risk.”
Pal brings decades of practice to his work. He studied at Rabindra Bharati University in Kolkata, trained in commercial art and design, moved into photography, and later pursued further studies in Germany. He has exhibited in India, Germany and the US, and was named Upcoming Photographer of Asia in 2009.
Yet in his early months in Australia, the challenge felt unfamiliar.
“I could see an ocean of opportunity,” he admitted, “but didn’t know where to begin.”
So he went where the first steps are often offered without judgement. Community programs. Sketch clubs. Council-run workshops.
“Council programs particularly, became a bridge into the local art scene. My earliest work in Australia was shaped directly by this entry point. I did a one-hour workshop with kids and older people.”
From there, a mentorship program followed. Then a four-person show. Slowly, the first year stopped feeling like a wall and began to feel like a corridor with doors.
Attendees from that first workshop turned up to the opening of his solo show, amazed at how much he had built in a short time.
Why stitch – and why now?
Pal began stitching after coming to Australia. There is a practical reason, too. “It is not expensive,” he disclosed, laughing about his affection for Spotlight and the quality of Gutermann thread. But there is also a cultural and political shift he has felt deeply: in Australia, forms that might be sidelined as “folk” elsewhere are treated with institutional respect.
He speaks about Aboriginal art with admiration, not as a surface influence, but as an example of what cultural policy can do when it chooses to value heritage. “Here they show Aboriginal work in the museums, they respect it,” he noted, contrasting it with how folk practices are often treated in India and even Europe.Abhijit Pa
In Chordi, the kantha stitch becomes an act of holding together time. “I am stitching my dreams past to my present,” he said.
The drawings embrace “imperfection.” For Pal, the goal is not technical brilliance, but the recovery of something more fragile: innocence.
Belonging, without gatekeeping
Pal credits Melbourne’s openness for allowing him to find his footing. He talks about open calls, councils looking for local talent, and the lack of the “who-knows-who” gatekeeping that can dominate art circles elsewhere. “Here it is very open,” he noted. “In India, it is always who knows who… otherwise, it is very difficult to be in the circle.”
His practice here has expanded beyond galleries too: murals, workshops with school children, and even theatre, which began with set design and unexpectedly pushed him onto the stage.
That curiosity is also how he teaches. In multicultural classrooms, often with refugee communities, “I teach them how to express.”
Perhaps that is what Chordi finally does too. It does not demand that you understand every Bengali word. It does not insist you share the same childhood references. It asks only that you recognise the universal ache of remembering, and the courage it takes to make a new home without deleting the old one.
Check out Pal’s solo exhibition Chordi on display at Kingston Arts Centre until 14 March.
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