Vikesh Kapoor
In the Pines, 2017/2021

Archival pigment print; 16 x 20 inches
Edition 1/5 + 2AP, signed, on label
Unframed
Courtesy of the artist
Estimated value: $1,250

In the Pines is from my project "See You at Home," which ​is a personal narrative that centers on family, memory, and the myth and melancholy surrounding the American Dream.

My parents, Shailendra and Sarla Kapoor, immigrated from India in 1973, settling in a small town of 10,000 people in rural Pennsylvania. They are one of only a few immigrant families in the region. While they left India for a better life, the shift from a collectivist nation to an individualistic one led to isolation just as much as it led to freedom. As they grow old in Pennsylvania, with​ ​my sister and I no longer living nearby, their isolation only becomes more apparent to me. ​

I began making work about my family during a trip to India with my father, 15 years ago. I hadn’t visited since I was a child, and it was my father’s first time in 16 years. It was important for both of us. Questions of family, identity, and personal history were born out of that trip and continue to inform ​my work and this project today.

"Se​e You at Home"​ ​explores the dichotomies of home and homeland, freedom and isolation, collectivism and individualism, through images I make of my parents’ current life in America imbued with memories of their past.​

About the Artist:
Vikesh Kapoor

Vikesh Kapoor is a multidisciplinary artist from Sunset Pines, Pennsylvania, whose work examines race, class, and identity as a first-generation American.

His ongoing photo-based narrative, "See You at Home," has received support from curators at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Tate Modern, UK; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; and the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA.

Kapoor received The Joan Hohlt and Roger Wich Emerging Photographer Scholarship from Houston Center for Photography in 2021, the Hopper Prize in 2020, the PhotoNola Review Grand Prize in 2019, a Lensculture Art Photography Juror's Pick Award in 2018, and a CENTER Project Development Grant in 2018. In 2020, he received 2nd place for the PHmuseum Mobile Photography Prize. He was also a finalist for the Documentary Essay Prize from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and a finalist for the Portrait Award presented by Head On Photo Festival, Australia. In 2019, Kapoor was a semifinalist for the Outwin Boochever Award at the National Portrait Gallery and shortlisted for the Grand Prix Images Vevey Award.

Kapoor's first solo exhibitions for "See You at Home" will be on view at PhotoNOLA Festival, New Orleans, in December 2021 and Filter Space, Chicago, in February 2022. His photographs have exhibited at Aperture Foundation, New York; Houston Center for Photography; San Francisco Camerawork, Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh; Photo Vogue Festival, Milan; among other venues.

He was an artist in residence at Latitude Chicago in 2021 and at Center of Photography, Woodstock, NY, in 2019.

Website: vikeshkapoor.com
Facebook: /vikeshkapoor
Instagram: @vikeshkapoor
Twitter: @vikeshkapoor
Venmo: @vikesh-kapoor
Cashapp: $vikeshkapoor1