Beyond sleep and rest, the bed signifies a place of belonging and permanence, a place we like to call ‘home’. Therefore, to examine the unique relationship we share with our beds is to delve into our most intimate notions of what makes a home. For this reason, a childhood bed can be seen simultaneously, as a space for dreams and fantasies, a refuge from the perils of the real world, or even a space that evokes deep anxiety. A bed may begin with a headboard and a mattress in our imagination but clearly it doesn't end there.

Veera Rustomji explores the many ideas around one’s bed through distance and displacement.

At the beginning of the project, Rustomji was studying in London and found it both wonderful and strange that even the ice-cold, tiny spaces she could afford became new homes, simply because she came back to rest her head at night. Her photos track her enquiry of the static nature of a bed against the ever-evolving and fluctuating idea of a home.

In an attempt to understand displacement, she first began with water-colour drawings of ghostly beds suspended mid-air on printed photographs, defying placement or stability.

Utilising memories and personal family archives, she then crafted wooden toy-sized beds with the help of a Karachi-based carpenter, Fakhruddin Khan.

The stripped frames of the beds against familiar domestic backdrops emphasise the relationships we have with a piece of furniture that we often take for granted. The ‘prop’ like settings look at ideas of displacement, emptiness and make-do construction.

Garden shrubs and itchy plants, empty photo album pages, bed sheets from 1989 and ice trays are visuals which signify visceral phases of Rustomji’s relationships with both her permanent and makeshift homes.