Envisaging Genealogies and Disability Justice

Bindi Vora (BV): Can you introduce yourself and speak a bit about your work around advocacy and disability justice?

Sabrina Tirvengadum (ST): I am a British Mauritian visual artist from East London, UK. Since birth I've experienced hearing loss which has become worse over time. It’s only recently that I have started to think of myself as someone who is deaf and disabled. School was tough for me, but I was surrounded by my dad's love for taking photos and videos of our family.

I always knew I had a creative side - I studied Photographic Arts at Westminster University and loved it! After graduating I went on an adventure, backpacking and reconnecting with my Mauritian roots to learn more about my heritage. When I came back to the UK it was hard to find a job because of the recession, but I got work retouching photos and started to learn web design and coding, which led me to a career in digital design. However I quickly realised I wanted to express myself more creatively and began to feel a bit stuck.

During the pandemic, I experienced new barriers when working remotely and online, and so I started getting more involved in different projects and learning more about digital accessibility. In 2020, my partner Mark Allred and I co-founded WAH, We’re All Human. The WAH website provides helpful resources around digital accessibility and as the project has developed we’ve also begun running creative workshops and working on graphic design projects. Now, it provides space to uplift and empower disabled creatives, giving them a stronger voice. This work provided me with opportunities to express myself, promote inclusivity and reconnect with art.

BV: So how do these conversations around disability justice intersect with your wider practice?

ST: Now, I proudly call myself a visual artist and advocate for disabled people. Creating art and advocating for disability justice is vital in my practice. Through art, I have found a powerful tool to make a difference and express myself. I have been fortunate to be part of incredible campaigns that amplify the voices of marginalised individuals. Even when disability is not the central focus of my work, I believe that my identity as a deaf, brown-skinned woman can shed light on the challenges faced by South Asians with disabilities. In our community, disabilities are often seen as something to be kept secret or overlooked. By embracing visibility, I aim to challenge these misconceptions. I want to show that we should not hide who we are. We deserve to be seen, recognised and celebrated for our unique experiences and contributions.

However, as I progressed in my creative journey, I realised I didn't want every conversation to revolve only around disability justice and accessibility campaigns. Constantly focusing on these issues can be draining for disabled individuals. I made the decision to separate my practice into two aspects: digital accessibility on the one hand and exploring my personal heritage on the other. Nevertheless, the main purpose remains representation. I want people to be aware of my deafness, but I don't want to be reduced to a simple checkmark. I want my work to speak for itself and make a positive impact.

This year, I have been fortunate to showcase my artwork at esteemed establishments including The Photographers’ Gallery, New Art Exchange (NAE), the House of St Barnabas, Audible HQ, LoosenArt, Autograph, Space Studios, DSQ Gallery, The Print House Gallery, and I have also received funding from the Barbican.

BV: Archives, collage and mixed media are all part of your practice – why are these mediums important when constructing narratives in your work?

ST: Working in the corporate world, I was often told what designs were acceptable and I didn’t have as much creative freedom as I wanted. So I started working on my own art. Making collages and reflecting on my past brings me joy and helps me understand who I am and who I want to be. It's like uncovering different layers of myself and exploring different paths to achieve my goals. I enjoy trying new things and learning new skills.

I have a desire to tell stories using photography, and with the wide range of digital tools available, I have more options to create diverse stories and shape the narrative. That's why I'm currently exploring AI image generators using prompt keywords, taking photographs and creating digital collages with old photos. What I find fascinating about AI is that it's not perfect, and the mistakes it makes can reveal new forms and subjects, altering how I represent things. I don't know where I'll stop and that uncertainty is part of the beauty of the process. It's a wonderful journey and I never know where it will take me. The unpredictability adds another layer to my art that keeps it exciting. These images originated from my parents' childhood photos, blended with words and other images.

BV: Where do you look to source material from? Are there particular sources you turn to when thinking about constructing these fragile narratives?

ST: I gather material from different places and sources to construct these delicate narratives. One important source is a book of case studies called Mauritians in London by A.R. Mannick. It talks about how moving to London can affect people and make them lose part of their cultural identity, particularly second-generation individuals. Reading this study confirmed what I was feeling.

To add depth to my narratives, I returned to Mauritius for my first time in 14 years to start recording my ancestry. Seeing family portraits from the 60s made me feel more connected to my Mauritian relatives and changed how I saw life. However I also found a lot of photos of people I didn't know, which made me realise my family is not well documented. I decided to take photos of my own family, to get closer to them and learn more about myself within the family.

I also visited historical museums in Mauritius to learn about the past of our ancestors who were indentured labourers. This inspired me to record sounds, conversations, singing and the playing of the Ravanne (a large tambourine-like instrument used in the sega music of Mauritius). Even after returning from Mauritius, I continued to have conversations to learn more about my family. These different conversations and experiences have all contributed to the creation of these delicate narratives, allowing me to capture the essence of our shared heritage and the stories of our ancestors.

BV: Your heritage is similar to mine – as a second-generation migrant I am sure you have had to grapple with aspects of your identity that were never fully embraced. These continuities and ruptures reveal so much about what is lost or gained through moments of migration, reflections on centuries of colonial power and more especially in the context of Mauritius. I wanted to know more about your afflictions or affiliations with these histories.

ST: When I was growing up, the Mauritian diaspora in my life didn't know much about our history. We never had a chance to ask or be told about it. This made it hard for us to figure out where we fit in, whether we were Asian, African or British. It made us feel rejected and confused. Not knowing our stories left me feeling lonely and disconnected from my family. I still need to learn more about the history of indentured labour to understand myself better. My current research is centred around understanding what it means to be Mauritian and it's starting to make more sense to me. Family is a core part of the Mauritian identity and it’s also articulated through our cuisine, languages, music and the stories we share. However, I didn't fully experience all of this, and that created a sense of disconnection from my true self. I only encountered such connections with my Mauritian identity during short holidays every five years, which later turned into a gap of fourteen years. After my father passed away, it was just me, my sister and my mum. My heritage seemed distant and that made it challenging for me to understand and connect to my identity without that community.

From conversations, I have noticed that many Mauritian parents wanted to blend in when they moved to the UK. They didn't speak the native Mauritian language often or practise our religion. They wanted their children to adopt British cultures. This was confusing because people saw me as South Asian, but I didn't feel like I belonged. I felt naturally connected to my Caribbean friends who shared a similar history and journey. However, I didn't fully understand the reason behind our strong connection until now. The indentured system is intertwined with slavery and was formed as a loophole to continue forced labour and exploitation. The difference is that this system offered a fixed period in exchange, perhaps, for land. I believe that generational trauma from these historical events impacts your culture and community which may mean we share similar ways of living and interacting.

I'm still on a journey to learn more about myself and my roots, especially exploring the history of indentured labour.

BV: Could you share the significance of the work If We Were Marrier d’Unienville, 2023?

ST: While researching my surname, I discovered that it might have been recorded incorrectly when indentured workers arrived at the Port Louis harbour in Mauritius. This led me to have a conversation with my cousin, who shared a surprising revelation: that our surname shouldn't be Tamil. This confused me at first but she explained that our grandfather was of mixed race, something I had never known before. She also mentioned that our great grandmother had worked as a maid for the Marrier d'Unienville family, who were French aristocrats.

Learning about this new information, I recalled that the d'Unienville surname was connected to my DNA – a genealogy website had shown that I had several cousins with that same surname – it made me revisit family photographs featuring unfamiliar faces and come to terms with this new knowledge. To explore the possibilities, I worked with my partner and artist, Mark Allred, who has his own personal connection to this journey, having joined my family through marriage. Our collaboration also brings new perspectives to my interpretations along with some echoes of my great grandparents' interracial relationship.

We set about using AI to create a "what if" memory – an image that incorporates elements of imagination alongside real memories. The artwork features these elements but questions the accuracy of both imagination and memory, as well as photography and AI overall. For example, the staircase in If We Were Marrier d’Unienville references the steps at Aapravasi Ghat that all indentured workers had to climb when they arrived in Mauritius. You may notice that the stairs lead to nowhere, a ‘glitch’ that felt meaningful, like the gaps and distortions in history. So I learned to embrace some of AI’s mistakes and kept them in my work. This creative journey of discovery and reflection allowed me to look into the complexities of my family history and embrace the layers of identity and heritage that have shaped me.

BV: Given the rapidly-changing pace of AI technologies, has your relationship with it - or perspective on it - shifted? Has the way you use it in your work altered with time, too?

ST: My relationship with generative AI started as an experiment but my interest was held when I began noticing issues with the technology. For instance, I noticed how poorly it represented people like me. These tools reflected Western datasets and reinforced eurocentric beauty standards. It became clear to me that the digital space, like history, wasn’t designed to hold people like me. When I initially typed “Indian” into the search field, AI generated stereotypical images of Indigenous Americans instead of South Asians. So I began using my family archive with AI, to create images that resemble both me and my ancestors. It became a way to say: “We are here. We exist in the digital space too.”

Even now, AI often turns my subject into a white-skinned person unless I explicitly define the ethnicity. The bias remains, and that’s why I continue to work against it. I’m in two minds about the ever-changing technology; in 2024 I stopped creating for over a year and during that time many new versions, upgrades and techniques were developed. It has been difficult to keep up. I have had to adapt the way I use AI tools, and as they have evolved, they have actually helped me streamline my process and complete pieces more quickly. That means I actually spend less time using AI, which I’m grateful for, as it’s known to have an effect on the climate.

At times I do feel pressure to keep up with the technology, but that can take the joy out of creating. As the tools become more refined, I sometimes feel like I lose the unpredictability I used to enjoy. Now I intentionally seek out imperfection to keep the work feeling “real”. I have started moving my work across different AI platforms in search of the glitches. But the more advanced AI becomes, the more I question what it means to make something that is truly mine. To explore this, I’ve started building my own AI model using images from my personal archive. The archive anchors the work and allows me to guide the tool, rather than letting it take the lead.

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Sabrina Tirvengadum's work will feature in Autograph's exhibition, I Still Dream of Lost Vocabularies, a group exhibition examining political dissent and erasure through the idea of collage, running 10 October 2025 - 21 March 2026.