Vivek Vadoliya

“When my mother fell ill, I began photographing her as a way of connecting and coping. This period marked a shift in my practice, opening new questions around care, home, and emotional inheritance. The camera became more than a tool—it became a way to understand the evolving roles within family and the fragility of self during moments of transition.”& When the Seeds Fell by Vivek Vadoliya is a multivalent exploration of what it means to belong across cultures and generations. Catalysed by his mother’s journey with illness and eventual recovery, Vadoliya encounters a deep personal reckoning of his role both as an artist and the eldest son in a patriarchal Gujarati family.At its heart, the exhibition is a self-portrait of duality explored through a constellation of photography, moving image, constructed portraits and reworked family archives. Vadoliya leads with vulnerability as he attempts to negotiate the emotional and cultural tension between familial duty and upholding ancestral values with self-discovery and carving out one’s path. The notion of “home” runs throughout, but not as a fixed place. Instead, home emerges as a moving construct shaped by migration, memory, and shifting generational landscapes.

Making poetry out of collisions has long been the purview of Vadoliya’s practice: to hide and reveal, deconstruct and reconstruct, play and resist. The artworks, made to be shared with their community, are a way to mark this personal journey by confronting questions that|critique, challenge and provoke: What does it mean to exist between two worlds? How do we inherit cultural identity? What defines home? How do you navigate the cultural structures of family in the diaspora? How do social pressures evolve through generations? What do we inherit that isn’t just material but emotional?

Working across documentary, fashion and portraiture, Vivek Vadoliya’s projects explore themes that are rooted in experience, such as societal masculinity and beauty ideals, as well as his own British Asian identity. Through this Vivek has crafted a distinct, warm, generous and deeply personal aesthetic, celebrating people or places typically overlooked.

Exhibition at 1014 gallery open 7th July – 8th of August

Text Gem Fletcher
Curator Jamie Allan Shaw