How to Climb a Tree

Aparna's deeply lyrical photobook is a personal, intuitive image series that episodically documents a timespan when her 10-year-old son was living in a boarding school in Madanapalle, India. What emerges is a collaborative project between mother and son drawn over five years of communication, wherein the images become meditative, introspective traces of places and moments that felt like home for both of them. Through the visual explorations, the artist takes liberties to re-enact and find alternative imaginings to moments that could not be documented. Interspersed with handwritten letters and illustrations, the book examines how a physical absence or distance can be expressively redrafted through emotional awareness. In this photobook, Aparna creates a safe space - one in which she allows her own vulnerability of the experience of motherhood to slip through while also trying to root her son, giving him a way to return to this time and space again and again. In the letter to his future self, she writes, "This book, I hope, will always remind you to seek your favourite tree, find the best branch to sit on, share it with people you love, and find your place in the world.“