Someday We Will Hug

Someday We Will Hug is a contemporary acrylic painting by South African artist Shana Ellappa, rooted in her ongoing exploration of memory, ancestry, and diasporic identity. The work reflects on the quiet, often unseen intimacies that existed within conditions of hardship, foregrounding tenderness, longing, and emotional connection within histories marked by displacement and labour.

Rather than depicting history as distant or impersonal, Ellappa centres the human experience of love and yearning, reminding viewers that those who came before us lived full emotional lives despite systemic constraint. The title itself gestures toward both absence and hope: a deferred embrace that speaks to separation, loss, and the enduring desire for connection across time.

Situated within narratives of indentured labour and postcolonial histories, the painting operates as a form of remembrance and emotional reclamation. It honours the small, intimate moments, gestures of care, affection, and resilience, that are rarely recorded in official archives but remain vital to understanding lived experience.