“You don’t choose the jewellery — the jewellery chooses you.” (Aysha)
That phrase was said to me during a conversation for my project Empowered Adornment- Gold Jewellery Stories (2021), and it’s never left me....
Because it’s true, the gold I inherited from my Baa didn’t just come into my life as adornment. It came as a map, a legacy, a source of strength that has shaped not only who I am but the work I do now.
Returning to My Why
As you know this year marks a moment of reflection for me. As I look back at the 10 years in my creative business through the APS at 10 feature, I’ve found myself asking deeper questions about my practice: What’s at the heart of my work? Where am I being drawn? What is the foundation of my practice? Why did I start?
The answer is clear - it goes back to my Baa.
I didn’t realise how important a clear distinct moment was until much later - when, at 12 years old, I flew home alone from boarding school in Gujarat to be by her bedside. She passed away not long after, and though I didn’t understand it then, I was being called into a lineage, into something bigger than myself.
Years later, when I first saw her jewellery again, piece I inherited as the only daughter on my father’s side: something clicked.
That was the beginning of my journey back to her (and myself) , through gold.
From Personal Memory to Collective Legacy
In 2021, with support from Arts Council England’s Developing Your Creative Practice grant, I began interviewing women from the South Asian diaspora in the UK about their handed-down gold jewellery - pieces I saw as artefacts of migration, resilience, and memory. These conversations were never just about jewellery. They were about the stories of mothers and grandmothers, of Partition and migration, of loss and love, where we were documenting the unspoken strength carried by our foremothers in every engraved bangle, every heavy chain and ring.
I have spent the start of 2025 really reflecting on how my practice has evolved and now I truly realise that this project has become the foundation of a long-term body of work. What I’ve realised is that this work isn’t just documentation. This is reclamation & resistance.
Check out the project and podcast series as part of that project here.
Gold as Resistance & Roots
In Vedic philosophy, gold represents the soul, its malleable, radiant and resilient. In South Asian traditions, gold has always been more than wealth, it’s a form of stri-dhana, women’s property/wealth. Colonisation and caste structures reinforced by the British raj, and patriarchal legal frameworks often stripped women of formal rights, leaving jewellery as their only financial asset.
And yet, even in these layered oppressions - patriarchy, colonialism, casteism - gold jewellery endured as one of the few forms of agency for women. It remained hidden in sari folds, stitched into blouse linings, buried in lockers, or worn daily as both symbol and shield like a warrior.
Where my Baa's gold bangle wasn’t just ornamentation. It was autonomy, insurance, inheritance, memory, and resistance - all at once.
She may not have spoken the language of feminism or decolonialism, but her actions investing in gold after the unimaginable loss of her daughters, after a lifetime of migration and uncertainty were political. She gathered what power she could into those pieces, and passed them down to me.
Now, I hold them. Not just physically, but through my work: in design, curation, storytelling, and archiving.
From Dowry to Design
I’ve been reflecting deeply on how these legacies manifest in my creative practice. My jewellery designs aren’t just aesthetic, they’re tools of empowerment, pieces of storytelling. They are rooted in the histories of the South Asian diaspora, the new cultural codes we navigate and the privilege we have of reimagining them on our own terms.
In today’s diaspora, many of us are reclaiming adornment not as tradition for tradition’s sake, but as a conscious expression of our hybridity. Brides now pair their mum’s wedding set with bold, contemporary pieces. Others wear their grandmother’s gold every day (like myself) to feel them with us as we navigate new worlds. These pieces are no longer locked away for special occasions, but lived in.
We’re not waiting to be gifted security. We’re wearing it - proudly, loudly, and with love.
A Living Archive
Through my ongoing work and especially through the intimate conversations I’ve had, I’ve witnessed first hand how gold can unlock generations of silence. Through my project in 2021 people pulled pieces out of lockers and, for the first time, asked: “Whose was this? Where did it come from?” They remembered mothers, aunts, grandmothers. They heard their stories for the first time.
This seed of this work was planted for me years ago and this month's APS at 10 reflection was a deep reminder that this is THE WORK I’m committed to: documenting, amplifying, honouring.
Because British history is South Asian history. And gold is one of its most powerful storytellers.
