Akanksha ‘s artwork emerges from a deep personal response to events happening around her. She uses symbolism to form a personal visual vocabulary that reflects the storm of feelings and memories inside her. It speaks volumes about the constant yearning that everyone in the world holds towards their home. The fact that Saudade is essentially untranslatable in its intensity when we are living in the age of unprecedented mobility. Millions of people leave their home every year, some perhaps for pursuing relationships or career, many forced out by war or natural disasters. At a time when the very planet we live on is transforming into an unfamiliar place, our sense of Home – and what it means to miss it – may be challenged at its core. She further explores how objects can be markers of identity and how these may be reworked in contemporary contexts. By abstracting the structures inherent to the objects, she aims to invoke a sense of uneasy familiarity that inspires an alternative appreciation of familiar forms. She uses Cardboard as a medium here that symbolises packaging, moving or storing. Being malleable, inexpensive and easy to upcycle, cardboard allows to craft her work with sustainability and provides an eco-friendly kick to it. Repurposing, reusing, recycling and creative thinking about environment and about solutions to our global problem fills her with hope. Her work brings some great examples of upcycling on the table that is rarely being seen anywhere else and definitely deserves to be seen.