The Lost Voices of Partition – Northumbria University

Dr Nafhesa Ali of Northumbria University and the Glasgow Women’s Library commissioned me to make this hand-drawn animation, telling the stories of older South Asian women who were young children during, or born shortly after, the Partition of India and the creation of Pakistan. It moves through mass migration, dislocation, silence, loss, love and hope.

The women gathered across eight sessions at the Glasgow Women’s Library in 2023, answering back to the old saying that no one wants to talk about Partition. Together they wrote poetry, told stories and shared their experiences, and the animation’s narration is a poem they wrote collaboratively, holding difficult truths alongside the resilience of the women who lived through them.

Because the subject is so personal, I wanted to treat it with real tenderness, so I made much of it by hand using traditional cel animation. It holds more hand-drawn animation than anything else I’ve made. The careful part was honouring what these women survived while finding gentle, non-graphic ways to show it.

The piece has had a busy festival life, with 14 international festival screenings across 2023 and 2024, an Honourable Mention and a Best Animation nomination so far. You can read more about the project and its background in Northumbria University’s article about it.

If you have an oral history or research project you’d like to bring to life through hand-drawn animation, I’d love to hear from you. Get in touch.