Vikesh Kapoor
Vikesh Kapoor is an interdisciplinary artist from rural Pennsylvania and based in Los Angeles. Through photography, moving image, installation, music, and poetry, he explores the mythos of the American Dream. His work is currently included in The Outwin: American Portraiture Today at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian.
Hello, My Soft Corner! is a personal narrative about his parents' immigration from India to rural Pennsylvania, his mother's death, and his father's life continuing forward without her. Shailendra and Sarla Kapoor came to the United States in 1973, part of the first significant wave of South Asians to settle in America following the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. The project centers on family, memory, and the myth and melancholy surrounding the American Dream: the liminal space they have inhabited since leaving India, where the pursuit of freedom also produced isolation, and where collectivism gave way to individualism.
His mother passed away unexpectedly in January 2023. She had wanted to return to India to die, but could not.
With the support of the Film Photo Award, he will return to his mother's homeland during the award year to make photographs centered on Patna, in northern India, where both his parents are from and where his uncles and aunt still live. He will photograph the family homes, the city that shaped his parents before they left, and the Ganges, where his mother wished to be cremated.
