CRYPTIC CLUES

Here,it becomes evident that her large-format works are not canvases but fabrics which she dyes,embroiders and draws upon. The boiling process,which the Tamil Nadu-born artist is known for is actually as old as the hills. Kalamkari artists have been boiling fabric dyed with natural pigments since the 6th century. But Mani has reinvented this technique. During her PhD dissertation at the Maharaja Sayajirao University’s Faculty of Fine Arts,Mani travelled to Andhra Pradesh,Gujarat and Rajasthan in 2005-2006 to study the techniques of the Kalahasti artists who still practise this form of craft.

However,to assume that Mani is a traditional Kalamkari artist is erroneous. Because though her style is anchored in traditional methods her art is part of a contemporary discourse on history,colonial invasion and rule.

“In this current exhibition,I wanted to bring in the personal along with my concerns of the political. Of course political is personal,but here I have explored my own childhood memories and linked them up to my larger political concerns,” says Mani,whose current body of work dwells on subjects like education that teaches poems recited by colonial ancestors to children all over the country. “Through these works I try to explore language,class,private and public places and religion,with special attention to the girl child,” says Mani.

The personal series begins with a suite titled Songs of Innocence,which is a play on nursery rhymes,like Twinkle Little Star and a comment on crafts like Origami. Mani has infused these with her own sense of irony which is also played out in larger works like Emperor’s New Machine,Adriane’s Labyrinth and Study for Monument to Folly that look at various issues of colonialism. The Emperor’s New Machine is a take on the new clothes of the emperor,where the spectacle of the naked emperor is replaced by a sewing machine and acrobats who perform the trick of turning Indian raw material into foreign finished products.

Through the use of collage,readymade appliqué,clip art,Victorian epigrams and cannibalised bits from her earlier work,Mani shifts what circulates as vernacular art and popular culture into the realm of gallery-based art.