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Labored Landscapes
Rajiv Menon Contemporary, LA



Lakshmi’s Labored Landscapes extends as a layered narrative addressing the material, political, and economic hierarchies surrounding the kasavu. The artist attempts to express how a cloth wears the body even as the body wears the cloth. The kasavu as a material is a potent marker of the body, with highly coded designs and ways of wearing, depending on the wearer’s gender, class and caste.

The work highlights the weavers’ bodies, that laboriously weave the kasavu, and yet, are the very same bodies that are eventually not allowed to wear it. The work also questions how the body of the wearer carries the privilege of the textile, while negating the body of the weaver.
Key parts of the weaver’s body that ardously work the loom are magnified  – hands that pull the threads,  legs that constantly peddle and a hooked spine. A unique tactile weave enmeshes the bone structure into the kasavu threads making visible the weaver's body, whose presence and agency are otherwise, alienated, the moment the kasavu leaves the loom.

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Work I –

Hand49” x 30

2024

Kasavu, red & black threads, wood, shuttle, kasavu spool

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Work II -

Leg49” x 30”

2024

Kasavu, red & black threads, wood, laterite soil 

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Work III -
Spine 49” x 30”
2024
Kasavu, red & black threads, wood, cloth roller 

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