Primarily using photographs that are tied to specific memories or spaces over time, Vadakan is inquiring about the life her family has built and lost over the years. The works diverge into two main subjects: first a goodbye to her uncle who drowned suddenly on a family vacation in Thailand; the second an ode to her mother and the life within the apartment Vadakan’s grandparents have lived in for the past fifty years. The works strive to try to find a presence in the unspoken that parallels the photographs, contemplating how unprocessed grief or trauma transgress over time.

Memories of grief leave a void in their wake, memories of tenderness and trauma sculpt a person. A metamorphosis in the perception of how we view memories over time occurs through fractures in time, space, and reality. To evoke the emotional connotations and break apart the real space, colors of abstracted forms, fractured spaces, liminal spaces, and transfigured figures are used.