The artist Sunaina Bhalla presents a poignant and powerful exhibition to support all those going through breast cancer and fighting disease. She works internationally and collaboratively with Tapan Mittal-Deshpande, the Founder of Thotpot, a not-for-profit organisation which supports and works with communities and the arts, based in Mumbai and Uthra Rajgopal, a Curator, based in the UK. Collectively, Sunaina, Tapan and Uthra, along with the generous support of Nine Fish Gallery, have come together to present the inaugural exhibition of the initiative R.I.S.E, Resilient and Inspiring Stories of Empowerment which champions the holistic power of art to heal and bring us together.

The human body is in a constant cycle of repairing and regenerating. Our existence depends on it. When our bodies are attacked with a disease this cycle rapidly repeats. Yet simultaneously we are also slowly decaying. Although we know our physical presence is finite, we all have the instinct to survive.

This exhibition brings to the forefront the importance of these paradoxes. By reflecting on her own physical and emotional journey through breast cancer, Sunaina Bhalla draws on her autobiographical power of healing and the colours of Ayurvedic remedies. Handmade paper with golden turmeric hues creates a tensile strength, resembling taught skin, stretched over the surface of a light box. Like an x-ray image, we see fibrous thread-like structures and nerve endings pierced with needles, stitched in red and gold to signify the trauma and hope the body holds. Fragile, delicate lines hold their position like lightning bolts across the layers: the scars of time.

The process of suturing and piecing together our lives is captured in the collaborative quilt, hand-made by the women workforce of Thotpot Designed by Tapan Mittal-Deshpande and Sunaina Bhalla, this artwork, through its composition of colours, fabrics and stitches conveys the processes of protection, borne from resilient and inspiring stories of empowerment.