Naqab
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Book Design, Photography, Writing
Year: 2024 - 2025
Naqab is an artist's book that uses the metaphor of masks to investigate the social systems, inherited behaviours and personal histories that shape identity. Combining photography and writing, it examines the roles we inherit, perform, resist and, ultimately, choose. Across thirty portraits, some masks exist as individual explorations while others unfold as thematic series - including Red, Motherhood and Fairytales - where a single idea expands into multiple perspectives. Designed as an archive rather than a linear narrative, the book invites readers to navigate the work in fragments, mirroring the nature of identity itself. Rather than searching for a singular, authentic self, Naqab questions whether identity is fixed or something continually constructed through memory, performance and lived experience.
This studio-led exploration was initiated by co-founder Samira Gupta and developed over the course of a year. Working as a two-member team, Samira Gupta and Dhritiman Deb Pillai brought together photography, writing, styling and art direction to create a deeply personal yet cohesive body of work.
In 2026, it was shortlisted at the Kyoorius Design Awards and featured in the First List under Book Design - Culture, Lifestyle, Art & Design.
View the entry here.
Services
Book Design
Photography
Writing
Artist's Statement:
My identities are all stolen - born from careful observation, posturing and practice.
We compartmentalise ourselves into carefully constructed identities. Some overlap. Others exist in complete isolation. You encounter only the version I have chosen for you - a portrait rehearsed, edited and performed. These are acts of self-preservation, seeking validation, avoiding conflict, and constantly editing ourselves to fit the expectations of others. Each version becomes another carefully chosen mask, selected for the moment, the audience and the role we are required to play.
I was once asked, “Who are you, underneath it all?” That question led me to Naqab, where I began looking at my life experiences, the people, situations and circumstances that shaped who I am today. The question of a singular identity vanished, revealing a complex and tangled network of experiences, relationships and emotions that shaped the masks I have inhabited - many of which have served me well over the years.
We inherit identities long before we learn to question them. Daughter. Wife. Mother. Friend. Caregiver. Protector. Over time, these roles cease to feel like performances. They harden into habit, becoming a second skin - worn so long that the boundary between the face and the mask begins to disappear.
Who am I then? A sum of these many selves or fragments of people who have influenced me? Underneath the mask is there a voice that is authentically mine? Or is authenticity another façade behind which we hide to justify who we are and why we do the things we do?
I wear a mask when I fear retribution. I wear one to belong. I wear one to be seen and heard. I wear one to disappear. I wear one to survive. I wear one to be loved. And sometimes, I no longer know where the mask ends and I begin.
Naqab is an ongoing investigation into the social systems, inherited behaviours and personal histories that have shaped me. Through photography and writing, each portrait becomes an act of excavation—an attempt to understand the identities I have inherited, performed, resisted and, finally, chosen.
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A 17 Chittaranjan Park
New Delhi 110019
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Enquiries
samira@studioeksaat.com
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Internships
info@studioeksaat.com
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