Untitled Homeland

The Unwritten Archive of the South Asian Diaspora

“Untitled Homeland” explores how South Asian migrants have navigated the unspoken hierarchies they carry, caste, gender roles, religious divisions, and generational trauma alongside the pressures of assimilation in the U.S. Curated by Kyla Gaganam, the exhibition features South Asian art, historical artifacts, and community archives exploring migration, memory, and belonging across generations.

Gallery hours:
Saturday, November 1st: 12-6pm
Sunday, November 2nd: 12-6pm
Saturday, November 8th: 12-5pm
Sunday, November 9th: 12-5pm
Saturday, November 15th: 11am-7pm

Contact us to schedule a viewing outside of these hours.

Art Curator: Kyla Gaganam
Kyla Gaganam is an artist and curator based in Austin, Texas, creating surreal, hand drawn pieces that reflect on the diverse inner lives, rituals, and culture of South Asian women. Her work blends personal storytelling with dreamlike surrealism, offering intimate reflections on belonging in the south asian diaspora. Each piece begins on custom stained paper and unfolds like a visual puzzle, layered with symbolism, recurring motifs, each gallery telling a story. Her collections draw from traditional South Asian storytelling and are deeply inspired by traditional ecological knowledge, and climate storytelling. All of Kyla’s work begins handmade, before evolving into digital or print.

As a curator, Kyla is committed to building intentional, community rooted exhibitions that center South Asian narratives. Her recent showcase RITUALS, featured in the Austin American-Statesman, was the first of its kind in Austin to spotlight South Asian artists and small businesses in a culturally grounded, artist-led format. This fall, Kyla is leading the curation of the first ever arts exhibition at the Museum of Asian Texans. The artist showcase will run alongside a historical exhibition exploring South Asian migration, injustice, and activism across Texas offering a multidimensional space for reflection, resistance, and reimagination.

Featuring the artwork and stories of:

Anindita Dasgupta
An artist whose journey spans from Mumbai to Dallas, Anindita draws inspiration from the Post-Impressionist era, blending vivid color and layered texture to create intuitive, abstract-surreal landscapes. Each piece unfolds through instinct and imagination, echoing how identity and memory transform across time and distance. Her work embodies the spirit of Untitled Homeland reflecting on what we inherit knowingly and unknowingly, the hierarchies we carry across oceans, and how belonging is reimagined in migration. In her dreamlike terrains, erasure gives way to renewal, reflecting hope, growth, and the imagination of a planet that sustains us while capturing the wonder and spirit of the world we share

Shafkat Anowar
Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Shafkat’s journey as an immigrant began in 2016, when he moved to Hawai‘i to pursue higher education at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. What started as a childhood fascination, cutting and pasting cricket and football photos into scrapbooks, grew into a lifelong calling to tell stories that can’t be found through a simple search. His early work in Hawai‘i, documenting Native Hawaiian issues and conflicts, shaped his commitment to visual storytelling rooted in place, justice, and community. Now a Visual Journalist at The Dallas Morning News, his lens turns toward the South Asian diaspora in North Texas, capturing the evolving identity of Bangladeshi and Desi communities across the DFW metroplex. His work reveals how South Asians in Texas weave fragmented geographies into new forms of home, honoring where they come from while building where they are. Featured in outlets like The Wall Street Journal, AP, Honolulu Civil Beat, and Hana Hou Magazine, and recognized by Eddie Adams Workshop and the College Photographer of the Year, Shafkat continues to preserve what words often can’t: the quiet pride and resilience of diasporic life.

Anoosha Syed
a Pakistani-Canadian illustrator, author, and designer based in Dallas, Texas with over a decade of experience in illustration, character design, and animation, Anoosha has illustrated more than forty children’s books and authored four of her own. Her vibrant storytelling, joyful, heartfelt, and rooted in identity has received widespread recognition, including honors from the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, the Society of Illustrators Original Art Show, and the Forest of Reading Awards. After leaving her first university to pursue a BFA in Illustration at Ceruleum École d’arts Visuels in Switzerland, a program taught entirely in French, she built her career from the ground up. Through persistence, late nights, and self-taught artistry, she transitioned from animation to book illustration, working with Disney Jr., Nickelodeon, Netflix, and Penguin Random House.As first artist in her family, Anoosha continues to challenge narrow definitions of success and representation. Her work celebrates South Asian and Muslim identity, reimagining what belonging looks like for children across the diaspora. Through color, character, and compassion, she reminds us that every story, like every child deserves to be seen.

Anusha Sekhar
Anusha Sekhar is a first generation Indian American artist who recently relocated to Dallas from New York. Anusha draws inspiration from her cultural background, personal experiences, and the world around her. She is self-taught and has been creating art since a young age. Her work has evolved to encompass various mediums, including acrylic, watercolor, and mixed media. With a deep appreciation for color and texture, Anusha’s artwork often features vibrant hues and intricate details that draw the viewer in and bring her work to life. Most recently, she has been incorporating upcycled Indian fabrics into her mixed media pieces. Her work explores themes such as female empowerment, diversity, and colorism, and aims to spark conversations and encourage reflection. Anusha has exhibited her work in various art shows and fairs, including Red Dot Miami and The Other Art Fair. She is also a live event painter and has painted at several weddings,fashion shows, concerts, and non-profit galas. Through her art, Anusha invites viewers to explore their own stories and perspectives, and to engage with the world in a deeper and more meaningful way. She continues to be actively involved in promoting diversity and inclusivity in the arts community and using her art to fundraise for various non-profit organizations.

Farzana Razzaque
Farzana Razzaque is a Dallas-based Master Calligrapher and trained Illumination Artist, holding an ljaza in the Ottoman tradition, the highest authorization to teach, specializing in Thuluth and Naskh scripts. She studied for many years under the guidance of Chinese Master Calligrapher Haji Noor Deen, as well as master illumination artists, developing a meticulous practice that merges reverence for tradition with the innovation of contemporary art. Her work draws from the paradoxical nature of Islamic art, where infinite possibilities emerge within structure, a harmony of discipline and freedom that reflects both her architectural training and her life lived across cultures. Using inks, gouache, shell gold, and watercolor, Farzana creates compositions shaped by geometry, biomorphic patterns, and Arabic calligraphy, blending centuries-old techniques with modern questions of identity, spirituality, and belonging.

Each piece begins within the precision of a grid, measured by compass, ruler, and pencil, yet blooms with pattern, rhythm, and light, transforming mathematical form into spiritual expression. Her art reveals how Islamic geometry and design become languages of devotion and balance, offering visual meditations on order, beauty, and the divine. Farzana’s practice examines what we inherit through culture and craft, how those inheritances evolve across migration, and how art becomes a vessel for reimagining home. Rooted in the belief that art is both a spiritual force and a bridge across cultural divides, her calligraphy and illumination invite viewers to contemplate faith, memory, and the shared patterns that bind humanity together.

Mohana Smitha Kodimela
Ravi and Mohana’s wood artworks speak to the complexities of migration and displacement, reflecting how religious belief systems have sculpted their identities, encouraging them to explore new horizons while staying deeply connected to their roots. Through carved forms, painted details, and vibrant motifs, they reveal how inherited ideologies and traditions continue to shape the lives of the Indian diaspora, offering both guidance and belonging. Grounded in the search for divinity, the essence of Indian culture, their vision is to translate sacred narratives onto wood, reclaiming ancestral stories and reimagining futures where tradition and spirituality guide us through shifting landscapes.
Embracing the richness of traditional folk art, the duo complements each other’s strengths, one shaping forms, the other adding color and pattern. Each piece emerges intuitively, bridging heritage and contemporary living. Their work honors tradition while reimagining identity, creating art that feels alive and at home in the modern world.

Pooja Gopi
Growing up between Chennai and the United States, Pooja has carried her art across every stage of life, finding both comfort and continuity in creating. Her paintings often blend bold colors, intricate textiles, jewelry, and architectural motifs that reflect her South Indian roots, alongside subtle symbols of her diasporic experience. In Blind Spots, Pooja reimagines the McKim Courtyard of the Boston Public Library, layering its Western architecture with her own dreamlike touch. The piece explores vulnerability, watchfulness, and awareness, asking, Who are you trusting to look after your blind spots? Through these questions, she reflects on how perception, protection, and trust shape belonging. Her featured work, Choreography of Judgment, depicts a circle of Bharatanatyam dancers, each watching, correcting, and comparing the other. Having trained for eight years, Pooja draws from her own experience to examine expectations and scrutiny, asking, What does it mean to be perfect when the standard itself is subjective? Through color, form, and introspection, Pooja’s art explores inheritance, belonging, and the courage to redefine perfection on one’s own terms.

Shreya Shankar
Shreya Shankar is a Tamil-American artist, futurist, and designer based in Oakland, California. Shreya’s practice is where ancestral forms and futurisms meet, spanning design, research, mythology, architecture, and visual art. Across their oeuvre, Shreya’s work builds syncretic visual and spatial languages that bridge ancestral cosmologies with liberatory futures. With degrees in Environmental Policy, Urban Planning, and Architecture from UC Berkeley and CCA, Shreya draws on spiritual ecology, folklore, and foresight to explore how memory, myth, and imagination can co-create new frameworks for world-making. In conversation with Untitled Homeland’s themes of migration, remembrance, and reimagination, Shreya’s work envisions new architectures of ancestry and futurity, inviting viewers to see heritage not as static, but as a living blueprint for collective liberation.

Nishtha Kapuria-Cardozo
Nishtha Kapuria-Cardozo is a Dallas-based artist and writer whose work blends art, memory, and archival storytelling to explore South Asian identity across generations. For Untitled Homeland, Nishtha contributes both personal artifacts and oral histories that reflect on her father, Dheeraj Kapuria, who played a pivotal role in bringing Zee TV to the United States, helping connect early South Asian immigrants to their culture through televised media. Her reflections trace how diasporic families have preserved belonging through everyday rituals, storytelling, and cultural transmission across oceans. As part of the exhibition’s historical archive section, Nishtha’s contributions highlight how memory can serve as both resistance and reclamation, an act of care for the histories often left out of institutional narratives. Through her work, Nishtha redefines the archive as a living space where art, heritage, and oral history converge to honor the ties that continue to shape the South Asian diaspora in Texas and beyond.

Rida S. Ahmed
Rida S. Ahmed is a South Indian American Muslim writer whose work bridges storytelling, memory, and migration. Through prose and poetry, Rida explores the quiet intersections of faith, family, and identity, capturing how the current generation of South Asians in America navigates culture, religion, and belonging in everyday life.
Her stories often begin with the familiar, a mother’s bedtime tale, a family’s unspoken expectations, a remembered smell of chai, and expand into reflections on how traditions evolve across oceans and generations. Writing with both tenderness and clarity, Rida crafts simple plots with profound messages, reimagining how diasporic families inherit, reinterpret, and resist the systems that shape them.

Maha Qadri, Mariam Ali, Noor Khan

Hadi Jawad
Hadi Jawad is the co-founder and president of Human Rights Dallas, a nonprofit dedicated to building a culture of human rights through education and the arts. A lifelong advocate for justice and dignity, Hadi has organized campaigns, cultural programs, and public forums addressing issues from local histories of injustice to global crises. His work bridges communities, uniting civic leaders, artists, and activists to spark dialogue and drive meaningful change. Known for weaving history, culture, and strategy into advocacy, Hadi brings a visionary approach to human rights—one that ensures the past informs the present, and dignity remains at the center of public life.

Sandhya Pallana
Sandhya Pallana is a Texas based South Asian American creator and coach whose life has been shaped by the movement of cultures across continents. Her family’s migrations spanned India, East Africa, Europe, and ultimately Texas, grounding her in a multilayered sense of identity and belonging. Raised by yoga instructors, Sandhya’s connection to film began in childhood, inspired by her father, Kumar Pallana, and later through firsthand experience on different sets including work on The Terminal with Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. These moments reinforced her fascination with human behavior, wellbeing, and storytelling.

Her studies in psychology and film, combined with a lifelong engagement with wellness and technology, inform a coaching practice that is both creative and transformational. Through hypnosis, meditation, yoga, and embodied inquiry, she approaches her work as an artist might—shaping experiences, exploring internal landscapes, and helping others navigate the complexities of identity, tradition, and personal evolution. Her work remains rooted in the question of what it means to be human and how we create community for the betterment of all people. This philosophy is the foundation of her company, AAVI Coaching: Clear your mind, command your world. www.aavicoaching.com

For Untitled Homeland, Sandhya’s contribution blends multimedia, family history, and cultural artifacts: framed pieces and articles document her parents’ pioneering role in bringing yoga to Texas in the late 1960s, while a drum reflects her father’s musical practice. Through these elements, her work highlights the presence and influence of Asian Americans in Texas history and invites reflection on belonging, heritage, and community.

Chanda Parbhoo
Chanda Parbhoo is the Founder and Executive Director of SAAVETX Education Fund, the largest South Asian outreach organization in Texas. Born in Johannesburg, South Africa during the apartheid era, her family was denied voting access or representation. This experience of systemic exclusion and inequality profoundly shaped her commitment to civic engagement and advocacy for equal representation.

With a deep dedication to empowering underrepresented communities, Chanda has focused her career on enhancing South Asian political participation in Texas. As a visionary leader, she founded SAAVETX Education Fund to provide a platform for South Asian voices, ensuring their representation in local and state political processes. Under her leadership, the organization has grown from a small, volunteer-led initiative to a powerful network of hundreds of engaged community members, significantly increasing voter turnout and cultivating an informed electorate.

Her work has allowed South Asians to have a seat at the table where decisions are being made, advocating for policies that reflect the values and needs of the state’s fastest-growing community. Chanda’s leadership has reshaped Texas’s political landscape, ensuring that the voices of South Asians are heard and respected. Her efforts continue to inspire change, strengthening South Asian representation and empowering the community to be an influential force in both civic and political spheres.

Arun Vittala