When the Australian High Commission’s Facebook page recently announced that Melbourne-based artist Abhijit Pal’s exhibition was on display at Kingston Arts, Moorabbin, it felt like an invitation into a world where photographs speak softly through thread. The exhibition, currently showing at Kingston Arts, 979 Nepean Highway, Moorabbin, is not simply a display of photographs. It is a deeply personal body of work where memory, imagination, and storytelling are literally stitched onto images.
Pal’s work stands apart because it blends photography with Bengal’s traditional Kantha embroidery and Bengali text. The result is both visually striking and emotionally intimate. Each piece feels almost like a handwritten letter—carefully composed and patiently stitched—addressed to the past.
Abhijit Pal migrated to Australia from Calcutta, now known as Kolkata. Yet the emotional roots of his artistic practice remain closely tied to his childhood memories of that city. Appropriately, he has titled the exhibition “Chhordi”, a Bengali word meaning “elder sister.” The series is both a tribute and a journey—one that traces his path from Kolkata to Melbourne while reconnecting with the landscapes of childhood.
At the heart of the exhibition is an abandoned family house near Kolkata where the artist spent many of his childhood days with his cousin-sister, who was four years older than him. Like many children growing up before the digital age, they filled their days with imagination. Ordinary corners of the house became theatres of endless possibility. They played games where they transformed themselves into teachers, doctors, explorers, princes, or princesses. Everyday spaces—the veranda, the courtyard, the long corridors—became the stage for these imaginary worlds.
Years later, when Pal returned to the house, he discovered that time had altered it dramatically. The once lively home now stood abandoned, its walls slowly being reclaimed by nature. Silence had replaced the laughter and chatter of childhood games. Yet the place still carried echoes of those moments.
This experience triggered a powerful wave of memory. Pal photographed the house as it stood—quiet, weathered, and filled with traces of the past. But he felt that the photographs alone could not fully express the stories embedded in those spaces. Something was missing: the voices, the conversations, the imaginative dialogues that once animated the rooms.
That was when he began stitching Bengali dialogues directly onto the photographic prints.
The embroidered words appear gently across the photographs, like whispers travelling across time. Through this simple but evocative act, the artist reconnects the vitality of childhood imagination with the stillness of the present. What once existed only in memory is now physically inscribed onto the surface of the image.
Pal’s approach draws inspiration from the Kantha stitching tradition of West Bengal. For generations, women in Bengal have practiced Kantha embroidery by stitching layers of cloth together using simple running stitches. But Kantha is more than a craft; it is a storytelling tradition. Through needle and thread, women have historically recorded emotions, memories, daily life, and personal experiences into fabric.
By incorporating Kantha-inspired embroidery into photography, Pal creates a dialogue between tradition and contemporary visual art. The thread becomes more than decoration—it becomes language, memory, and narrative.
The idea of working with embroidery is also deeply personal for the artist. Pal’s father, Senior Mr. Pal, practiced embroidery, and the young man often watched him work patiently with thread and fabric. Seeing this craft up close left a lasting impression on him. Years later, when he began searching for a way to express the layered memories of his childhood, returning to embroidery felt natural.
This blending of photography and stitching has allowed Pal to develop a distinctive artistic technique. His work moves fluidly between documentary and imagination. The photographs document real spaces—the abandoned house, the physical traces of time—while the embroidered text brings back the imaginative worlds that once filled those spaces.
The series ছোড়দি – My Elder Sister combines photography, hand embroidery, and Bengali typography in a way that feels both experimental and deeply nostalgic. Each piece carries multiple layers of storytelling. Some references come from childhood conversations with his cousin-sister; others draw inspiration from Bengali literature, adventure stories, and folktales that shaped their imaginative games.
The result is a body of work that feels both intensely personal and universally relatable. Anyone who has revisited a childhood home or remembered the games of youth can recognise the emotional resonance of these images.
Pal himself describes the project as an exploration of the intersection between memory, imagination, and place. Childhood, after all, is fleeting. The spaces where we once played inevitably change, and the stories we created there slowly fade unless we find ways to preserve them.
For Pal, embroidery provides that method of preservation. The stitches are not meant to be perfectly uniform or mechanically precise. Instead, they carry the subtle irregularities of human touch—much like memory itself. Through these threads, fragments of language, imagination, and cultural identity are carefully held together.
Today, as a Melbourne-based artist working across photography, embroidery, and mixed media, Abhijit Pal continues to explore the quiet narratives that shape everyday life. His work bridges two geographies—his Indian roots and his present life in Australia—while exploring themes of migration, belonging, and personal history.
Perhaps the most powerful message of Chhordi is directed toward younger generations growing up in an increasingly digital world. Childhood today often unfolds through screens and structured routines, leaving little space for the unstructured imagination that once flourished in empty houses and open courtyards.
Pal’s work gently reminds us of the value of those moments—of storytelling, language, and shared memories. In stitching together photographs and imagination, he preserves not just a house or a childhood, but an entire way of seeing the world.
In these carefully embroidered images, abandoned rooms begin to speak again. And through each delicate thread, the stories of childhood find a way to live on.