Aiswarya Rathna Raj/ Silenced

Aiswarya Rathna Raj is an Indian visual artist, photographer, and visual researcher based in Kerala. She holds a Master of Design in Photography Design from the National Institute of Design (NID), Gandhinagar India, and a Bachelor of Architecture. Her practice spans material-based photography, alternative photographic processes, installation, and archival research.

Working across analogue and experimental image-making, she investigates gender, domestic labour, memory, identity, and the relationship between photography, material, and place. Through cyanotype and other process-based techniques, she transforms everyday objects and overlooked traces into photographic works that question what is remembered, preserved, and left unseen.

Alongside her artistic practice, she has experience in exhibition production, museum operations, archival documentation, art direction, and cultural programming. Her work brings together research, material experimentation, and collaboration to create photography that engages with contemporary social and cultural narratives.

Fragments of Home is an ongoing body of work that began in 2025 from my own experience of returning to my family home in Kerala and observing the quiet rhythms of domestic life. Growing up within a patriarchal society, I came to recognise the kitchen as a space where care, nourishment, and survival are sustained through continuous, often invisible labour carried out primarily by women. Cooking, cleaning, washing, and maintaining the home are repeated every day, yet these acts are rarely acknowledged as labour. Once completed, they disappear almost immediately, leaving behind only temporary traces.