The Happy Punjabi Gothic series was created at Edinburgh Printmaker’s studio as part of the exhibition Transparency in 2019, curated by Mother Tongue and installed here at Edinburgh Printmakers. The exhibition responded to the architectural heritage of the Castlemills site – as a former silk factory, premises of the North British Rubber Company, and brewery – now occupied by Edinburgh Printmakers. The exhibition took as its point of departure the physical layers of the print-making process; the buildings’ history; and considered the local built environment as a present-day testimony to Scotland’s colonial past.

The exhibition’s title invoked the multiple definitions and etymological roots of the word ‘transparency,’ simultaneously i) meaning ­­­to shine a light through, ii) make easily detectible, and iii) to be open to public scrutiny, whilst transparency film is used in many printmaking methods as a means to transfer the image. Working with these three meanings in hand, the exhibition reflected upon on our current political environment, language, trade, travel, contact zones, and called into question Scotland’s amnesia towards its colonial past. At the same time, their explorations push-back against aspects of transparency: via defacement, through otherworldly and digital simulations, and in the use of appropriated imagery.