Advanced Fiber Studio (Highlights)
I am an Indian artist that uses fabric, thread and manipulation, to create interactive installations. I wrestle and transform the fabric to create formative gestures, weavings and bound structures. The tools I use to create my artwork often have cultural symbolism originating from events and daily rituals from my community, family and society. The colors in my work are highly intentional, conceptual and often hand dyed. They are derived from natural interaction such as tea stains or turmeric dye as this submerges the work in a cultural language. The gestures often present themselves in warmer colors such as golden yellow and reds that embody a sense of home and community for me.
I explore concepts of family and womanhood through the generosity and connectedness of fabric and thread. This becomes a representation of the connect and disconnect, I experience being a part of the Indian society, which takes the form of ambiguous critiques that embody the duality of this structure.
My practice is a fragmented archive of motifs and symbols such as tea stains, ‘saris’ and ‘moli’ the thread of protection, that in their recurrence inform and build from each other. These motifs although personifying their own history are specific and familiar to my experience, creating an overlay in their meaning. The installations I create using these symbols are often extracts from scenes that when encountered outside of a gallery could be easily dismissed. This recontextualization is important to me as it stresses the need for acknowledgment of these familiar interactions while elevating its value and stressing its significance similar to the daily effort that women put at home that goes unnoticed and unvalued.
The interactive nature of my work welcomes the viewer to activate and lend to its history and creation. This elicits a sensory and conceptual response where the viewer in turn becomes a collaborator by being enveloped in the work and its emotionality.