Shruti Mahajan contemplates instruments in the making of art and language: the dexterity of a line, the weight of colour, and the shape of an alphabet. Once intelligible sentences found in old papers of her long-gone relatives are cut into strips and reassembled into "books" that cannot be read, with pages that cannot be turned. These documents, carried from their home into her studio, have become the material to revisit forms such as that of the inland letter, where the paper is folded to become an envelope. Economy required every blank space to be filled with news and thoughts that brought happiness, and hurt. A scathing remark can be more painful than a paper-cut.

Through the process of making, she values and works with the nature of her material: old paper is brittle and crumbles, carbon paper leaves stains alongside tracing marks, documenting the placement of her hand and the pressure applied, a sharp needle pierces neatly, and the sewing machine leaves a trail of perforations.

She coaxes patterns and textures to the fore, but meaning loiters just out of reach of her letters.