Elisions and Inflections – progressions in slowness. The series of works being presented in this exhibition refer to some of the surfaces and scars opened over a course of practice in slow techniques of hand-embroidery and laborious activities of making our worlds with our hands. These works, in continuation with some works shown earlier at Westwerk Incisions, Inflections, Aberrations ( 2019), provide a more sustained context
of my practice. Drawing on experiential aspects of marginalization of migrants, their craftsmanship and labor, especially in the contingent contexts of the third worlds, these works provide some cues to grasp the vulnerabilities of ‘other’ worlds surviving with us. The anamorphic qualities of forms and literary sensibilities on surfaces of these works,
are aesthetic cues to the language of integration.

The title of the exhibition, alludes to certain ruptures in continuities, and brings strains
of images almost on the verge of obsolescence. Modulations of recognizability are fused with abstraction of the illegible, the distorted, the used, battered or discarded. Shapes are joined with forms, illegible with the recognizable, seductive with the repulsive, the body with its being. These seemingly incongruous forces provide the metaphoric temper of the works. Poetry and truths lie at the interstices or joinings. (artist’s statement)

Rakhi Peswani’s art practice explores various discursive and material aspects of crafts and the nuanced associations of crafts as languages, especially with an emphasis on the hand-made. She is interested in the affective possibilities of materiality and labour as well as the contexts or locations these create in contemporary image making. She has recently been examining the environmental and pedagogical ties associated with crafts based practices. Rakhi studied Ceramic Sculpture and Painting in Baroda and is currently working as Head of the Department of Visual Arts at Ashoka University, Sonipat.

Curated by Anja Ellenberger (art and film historian)