Artist Statement
  
"Family Portraits" is an extension of my earlier work "Self Portraits with Masks". It explores relationships, the entanglement of needs and desires, and the resultant baggage. It's a work-in-progress. I'd like to develop more in the series "Bridges" (see images) treating the same imagery in a minimal as well as a highly decorative fairy tale style.   

Artist’s Bio
  
Alka Raghuram is a filmmaker and a painter. Her short films Tired of Dancing, Panchali and The Ant and The Monkey have screened at various festivals in the US and abroad. Panchali received the John Gutman award for innovation in cinema and was a regional finalist in the Student Academy Awards (2004). The Ant and The Monkey received the Emerging Arts Fund in Spring 2006 from The Peninsula Community Foundation, and was nominated for the Princess Grace Award in 2005.
  
Currently she is finishing a documentary about coping with grief and loss after the 2004 Tsunami in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, India, which received the Donor Circle for the Arts Grant from Silicon Valley Foundation, and in early pre-production for her first feature “The Conqueror” which was presented at the Berlin Talent Project market in 2008. Alka was awarded the L’Oreal Woman of Worth Vision Filmmaker Award at Tribeca All Access in April 2008.