Migrant Stories
In 2022, I took a break from a 12-year teaching career to focus on my own work. This decision opened up the chance to pursue a deeply personal project—capturing the stories of migrant women through portraiture. Having grown up hearing stories of my family’s migration from Kenya to the UK in the early 60s, I’ve always been fascinated by these experiences. Now, as that generation reaches their 70s and 80s, I feel a sense of urgency to record their stories before it’s too late. I’ve begun this project with my own family, starting with portraits of my mother and mother-in-law.
Joginder Kaur
My mother-in-law is one of the kindest and gentlest people I know. She’s always there for us, cooking, cleaning, and doing everything she can to care for the family. My father-in-law had arrived in the UK a few years before her. The story goes that when she landed at Heathrow, he wasn’t there to meet her. A stranger, a kind man who had come to collect his own wife, offered to take her to the address she had for him in Southall.
When they knocked on the door, the person who answered said, “Oh, there’s no one by that name here.” For a moment, my mother-in-law was in shock—what was she to do? Where could she go, all alone in a foreign country? Just as she was frozen in uncertainty, a voice from behind called out, “There is a man who lives upstairs. It might be him.”
Thankfully, it was him, and they were reunited. My father-in-law never did receive the telegraph letting him know that my mother-in-law had boarded the plane. Oil on paper 16 x 20 inches
Darshan Kaur
I’m often asked if creativity runs in my whole family, and I always say yes! It all comes from our mother—she’s unbelievably talented. Whether it’s cooking, crochet, sewing, or knitting, she’s the queen of it all.
I remember, as a child, how she’d buy fabric at the market in the morning, sew a shalwar kameez by the afternoon, and be wearing it to the Gurdwara the very next day, to the astonishment of her friends. She’d giggle with delight at their amazed reactions.
We truly walk in the shadow of a giant. Oil on paper 16 x 20
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