“In an attempt to keep it safe under lock and key, the precious is often lost in the subconscious.” - Anubhav Syal

"Sharda" was my grand mother, she was a skeptic, she was always protective of us as kids,

she warned us of the streets and about the things that happened out there, her stories of strangers and how ill-intended people are in the world kept us from venturing. 

She was a collector and would have many keys of Doors, cupboards, bank lockers, chests, other houses. The day she died, I found a box with about 300 odd keys without any locks to be found, I began to see keys as not just something that represents the idea of security but as precious and even insecurity.

This work is a photo book that explores the character of "Sharda", a photographic archive, accompanied with some tings precious and the keys she left behind.

In 2018 this work translated into a metal sculpture where I put together 3500 keys that I began to collect from my travels, carefully accumulating the memories of the precious that the keys still hold. In this case the project became a larger space of collective insecurities, and memory of the precious that once was.