Meha Desai is a Mauritian-Indian photographer and visual storyteller, currently living in Mauritius. She holds a Master’s in Art History from the National Museum in India, a Bachelor’s in English Literature from Delhi University, and a Diploma in Photography from SPEOS in Paris. Her work has been influenced by her studies and interest in heritage  and anthropology and can be described as an interplay between academic and artistic practices that include anthropological methodologies, images, and archival materials, aiming to explore each subject’s narrative boundaries. Her work also plays with the themes of memory, displacement, home, and identity, using these as starting points to investigate personal and group histories. Her long term, ongoing project “Home Sweet Home”, for example, documents every house she has lived in since she was 15 years old. The project raises questions about how people, specially immigrants, create homes over and over again and the paradox of home being a stationary place. 

 

Currently a PhD student at the University of Birmingham, her thesis, which includes comprehensive photographic documentation, looks at the relationship between food heritage and the Parsi community of India which is on the brink of disappearing. Her work seeks to address the relationships between communities, culture, history, and identity by combining documentary photographic practices with fine art.

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