LAVANYA MANI
Lavanya Mani completed her MFA in creative painting, from The Faculty of Fine Arts, MSU Baroda in 2001. During that time she began incorporating a number of elements and aspects of textile dyeing, printing and embroidery in her work. As she continued working with cloth, she found herself being drawn toward traditional dyeing and printing processes in India (especially kalamkari) maybe because of its similarity to painting. Using a ‘traditional’/ ‘craft’ medium (like kalamkari) as a contemporary art practice necessitated an awareness of its location and context within the larger historical and cultural dynamic.
To that effect she has been trying to explore the multi-layered role which dyed and printed textiles have played in the history of colonial trade, the establishment of colonialism and the economics of political dominion and imperialism in India; while simultaneously drawing attention to the historical time when ‘high art’ and ‘craft’ became opposing categories that needed to be defined against each other in order to validate their existence.
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