Aaryama Somayaji

The Nameless Lands: Tabeez I, II, III, IV, V (2024)

Embroidery with beads and brassbells from Sarawak, vintage silk saree fabricfrom artist’s mother, graphite on wall

I - Headband, 80 x 4cm
II - Scarf, 116 x 6cm
III - Arm Band, 28 x 7.5cm
IV - Belt, 116 x 8 - 10.5cm
V - Chatelaine, 29.5 x 10cm

The Nameless Lands: Tabeez is a set of talisman bearing wearables, a souvenir bought especially for the artist, from the world that the Traveller is currently documenting. These are influenced by my travels to Sarawak, and reading about its folklore combined with my personal fascination with the esoteric. Using the visual language of the scroll made for my previous work for The Traveller’s Accounts, I further developed the style to design these protective seals that I have embroidered into the material.

These pieces have been created for the Winston Oh Travelogue show. The fabric used is my mother’s unbleached silk saree from the 80’s that had begun to fray and has met a new life in the form of these protective amulet-like accessories.

Aaryama Somayaji is an Indian artist based in Singapore. She has a background in storytelling and illustration. Her practice focuses on showcasing stories about food and its significance in the collective cultural existence of humans. Her work is influenced by her lived experiences in kitchens, both literal and metaphorical. She employs techniques from epic fantasy literature and anthropological studies of food movements, histories, and forms of consumption. Somayaji investigates our relationship with food and its impact on our social identity, using layered stories and complex logic systems to create personas that navigate worlds within worlds, making her work relevant in a global context.

After earning a Bachelor of Design (Hons) from the National Institute of Design, Andhra Pradesh in 2019 and a Master of Arts in Fine Arts (Distinction) from LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore in 2024, she worked as an illustrator-designer with trade publishers in India and Singapore, including HarperCollins and Penguin Random House. She has previously exhibited as part of this Is not a monster at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore and Weather - Tropical Lab 18. She received the LASALLE MA Merit Award in 2023 and the Dr. Winston Oh Travelogue Award in 2024.