Abhi Chinniah

INFO

Name	Abhi Chinniah (she/her)
Born	1992
Country of Birth	Aotearoa
Place of Residence	Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland
Ethnicities	Sri Lankan Tamil, Malaysian
Artform	Photography
Decades Active	2020s

ABOUT

Abhi Chinniah is a portrait photographer and writer based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Many of her photographs are taken outdoors, juxtaposing scenic Aotearoa backgrounds with her multicultural subjects, who are sometimes dressed in garments traditional to their cultural homelands. The subject of multiculturalism in Aotearoa is central to both Chinniah’s photography and her writing. In addition to her personal photographic practice, she is also a commercial photographer.

In 1919 Chinniah’s paternal grandfather migrated to Malaya, now Malaysia, from Jaffna, Sri Lanka. Her father moved to Aotearoa to study in Ōtautahi in 1973 from Malaysia, where she was later born. Chinniah and her family moved back to Malaysia when she was six-years old, which is where she spent much of her childhood and her parents eventually settled. However, Chinniah returned to Aotearoa at 18 to go to university and has lived in Tāmaki Makaurau ever since.

Chinniah’s route to photography took many turns. She was given a camera by her father at the age of 13 to photograph rotary club gatherings in Malaysia, which she then used to take on more creative projects, taking photos of her friends in outfits she would dress them up in. Despite enjoying photography, her parents encouraged her to pursue a more stable and financially lucrative study pathway. She initially went to university to study law, but then pivoted to accounting, eventually switching again and graduating with a degree in marketing. At the age of 24, when Chinniah was in a professional marketing role, she began using her camera again. Since then she has gone between pursuing her photography full-time and taking on part-time office work to support her creative practice.

Her first major photography project was titled Light Skin Dark Skin and was exhibited at Upstairs Gallery in Titirangi, Tāmaki Makaurau in 2020, as part of the Auckland Festival of Photography. Chinniah photographed six women based in Aotearoa who have migrant backgrounds wearing their cultural garments such as sarees and kurtas. The portraits were accompanied by statements written by the women in the photographs, outlining their personal experiences with colourism and racism within their communities and wider Aotearoa. In an interview for Woman magazine, Chinniah explains that:

This photoessay echoed my own lifelong experiences with colourism, and being introduced to skin lightening creams at the age of 7. The core message of Light Skin Dark Skin was skin colour discrimination – known as colourism – and what these experiences look like for women of different skin tones. There was discussion on reverse colourism too, and exploring how women of lighter skin tones were perceived in their community of predominantly dark skinned people.

Her second photography exhibition was titled A Migrant’s Path, a touring exhibition that has been shown in several galleries throughout Aotearoa. Chinniah’s family’s journey of migration weaving between Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Aotearoa inspired this series, piquing her curiosity about other migration stories in Aotearoa. In describing Chinniah’s photographic practice, Alessia Belsito-Riera stated:

Her work often explores questions around moving away from one’s roots – how to keep cultural practices, traditions, and beliefs alive; how to pass these elements down; and how traditions change over generations.

Light Skin Dark Skin and A Migrant’s Path were acquired by the National Library of New Zealand. As a writer, Chinniah contributes to The Spinoff, covering stories that speak to her migrant background and how that has affected her experience living in Aotearoa.