Thooli — An Immersive Installation on Maternal Ritual, Memory, and Resilience. Thooli is a site-specific installation and socially engaged project exploring postpartum care through ancestral knowledge, personal experience, and local storytelling 

Thooli is an immersive installation that explores postpartum identity, maternal memory, and intergenerational healing through an environment shaped by fabric, sound, suspended form, and storytelling. Drawing its name from the Tamil word for "cradle," Thooli centers the postpartum body as both site and symbol of transformation, tenderness, and inherited silence.

At the heart of the installation are hammocks crafted from sarees—intimate, everyday fabrics tied to care and ritual across generations. Suspended low to the ground, these hammocks invite visitors to move closer, shift their bodies, kneel, or bow—mirroring the physical gestures of postpartum care. Surrounding them, papercut portraits of women holding infants hover in a quiet constellation, evoking global maternal gestures of feeding, cradling, and carrying.

Projected onto a surrounding veil of sarees is a gentle loop of video: breathing fabrics, ritual gestures, and ambient domestic scenes that connect past and present. These visual textures are interwoven with a soundscape that reflects layered voices, lullabies, and environmental sounds collected through interviews.

The work responds to the slow disappearance of intergenerational knowledge around postpartum healing—knowledge once carried through touch, ritual, and oral transmission. In many immigrant and refugee communities, this rupture is felt acutely, as women experience isolation from the embodied wisdom that once surrounded birth and recovery.

Thooli draws from personal experience and a series of interviews with immigrant and refugee women, focusing on stories of postpartum care across cultures. Through this research, it reclaims and reimagines healing practices that have been lost, interrupted, or adapted over time.

By inviting viewers to move slowly through softness and shadow, Thooli offers a space of kinesthetic empathy—where cultural memory, physical vulnerability, and maternal resilience can be encountered in quiet intimacy.

Thooli is an immersive installation composed of three concentric circles that guide the viewer through an intimate narrative of postpartum care, memory, and ancestral healing. At the center hang eight low-hung hammocks crafted from sarees—delicate, breathable fabrics sourced from community members, symbolizing the cradling of both infants and maternal vulnerability. Suspended just above the ground, these hammocks invite slow physical engagement—viewers kneel, stoop, or sit close, echoing the embodied gestures of care. The second circle features intricate paper cutouts of women from diverse cultures holding and nursing their babies—each figure delicately suspended in midair, honoring the universality and specificity of maternal touch. Encircling the entire space, translucent sarees hang like a porous veil, becoming projection surfaces for softly looping video. These moving images—of breath, cloth, ritual gestures, and environments of domestic care—create an ever-shifting atmosphere of memory.

The lighting is dim and warm, emphasizing softness and interiority. Projectors cast moving images onto the outer layer of sarees, diffused to blend with the texture of the fabric. A surround soundscape of collected oral histories, lullabies, and ambient domestic sounds plays in gentle cycles, allowing the voices of immigrant and refugee women to inhabit the space. Audience members move through the installation slowly, physically negotiating their path between hammocks and silhouettes. The spatial layout encourages quiet observation and bodily presence—viewers must adapt their movement to navigate the low-hanging forms, creating a shared choreography of care and attentiveness. As visitors circle inward and outward, the installation mirrors the cycle of postpartum experience: deeply internal yet always shaped by those who surround us.

Workshops, Panels, and Performances

Workshops are a central component of Thooli, extending its themes beyond the gallery into shared spaces of making and conversation. Past and proposed workshops include Saree Storytelling sessions, where participants bring sarees from their families and share the stories embedded in their folds—memories of migration, rituals, or caregiving. In Fabric Monoprinting workshops, women use inked stencils and cloth to create personal visual narratives, drawing on body memory and postpartum experience. These workshops often involve intergenerational participation, inviting daughters, mothers, and grandmothers to create side by side, transforming fabric into archives of care, survival, and cultural continuity.

In tandem with the exhibition, public programs include panel talks such as “Art as Testimony”, “Postpartum Silence and the Story Circle”, and “Immigrant Women and Storytelling”. These events invite artists, doulas, scholars, and community organizers to reflect on the intersections of maternal health, displacement, and creative expression. The installation also serves as a site for performances: ritual-based activations may involve participants reading collected postpartum stories, singing lullabies in multiple languages, or engaging in guided movement rooted in caregiving gestures. These intimate acts bring the installation to life, reinforcing Thooli as a living, breathing space for community healing and cultural remembering.

Timeline & Development Plan (6–7 Months)

Phase 1: Research, Outreach & Story Circles (Month 1–2)
Begin by deepening community engagement through outreach with immigrant and refugee women, particularly new mothers, doulas, and caregivers. Organize and facilitate 3–4 intimate story circles, inviting participants to share postpartum experiences and cultural rituals around birth and recovery. These gatherings inform the installation’s narratives and visuals, while also serving as a communal space for healing and connection. Concurrently, conduct site visits to potential host venues to evaluate spatial needs, lighting conditions, and projection viability. Begin sourcing sarees and textiles contributed by community members, each carrying a personal or familial history.

Phase 2: Prototyping & Material Development (Month 2–3)
Using insights from the story circles, develop small-scale prototypes of the hammocks, paper cutouts, and projection elements. Experiment with monoprinting and fabric layering techniques. Collaborate with sound and video designers to begin creating the audio archive and projection footage. Test installation components in a studio environment to assess hanging systems, spatial flow, and interactivity. Begin editing and compiling voices, lullabies, and ambient recordings sourced from community participants.

Phase 3: Fabrication & Content Finalization (Month 4–5)
Complete the fabrication of all sculptural and suspended elements, including the saree hammocks, paper silhouettes, and textile screens. Finalize and mix soundscape and video projection loops. Curate and edit selected stories and recordings for integration into the final work. Confirm workshop and performance collaborators. Begin marketing and outreach for public programs and community engagement events.

Phase 4: Installation & Public Engagement (Month 6)
Install Thooli in concentric layers over a one-week period, working with technicians, volunteers, and collaborators. Soft-launch with a private walkthrough for community contributors. Over the next month, host a series of public workshops, performances, and panel discussions that activate the installation. Document all events through video, photography, and audio recordings.

Phase 5: Evaluation, Deinstallation & Legacy Planning (Month 7)
Facilitate post-program surveys and feedback sessions with participants and viewers. Reflect on the impact of the installation through interviews, evaluations, and a community gathering. Begin compiling documentation materials for publication, potential touring, and future partnerships. Deinstall with care, ensuring materials are preserved for reinstallation. The entire project is designed to be modular and scalable—able to expand into large institutional spaces or adapt into smaller, community-based formats.

Thooli offers audiences a deeply immersive and emotionally resonant experience that centers the often-silenced realities of postpartum life. Grounded in months of research and community story sourcing, particularly with immigrant and refugee women, the project honors ancestral wisdom and contemporary struggles through fabric, sound, and movement. By engaging with the installation physically and emotionally, visitors are invited to reflect on the complexity of postpartum care—its beauty, isolation, and the invisible labor it entails. The hammocks, sarees, and voices within the space act as both testimony and offering, sparking recognition, empathy, and remembrance.

Beyond its aesthetic presence, Thooli functions as a platform for vital public discourse. It fosters conversations around maternal mental health, healthcare access, paid maternity leave, and the healing practices that have been lost across generations. Through workshops, panels, and performances, the installation creates opportunities for collective learning, advocacy, and care. Its emphasis on community storytelling empowers women to speak their truths, while encouraging institutions and viewers alike to reconsider the role of cultural and communal support in postpartum recovery.