Artistic practice: Experiments with clay

My initial experimentation with clay started with fingers and hands. Just like in drawing, making an anatomy came naturally. Also clay being a very mouldable material, I wanted to experiment with it furthur. So I made small pots, then fingers both miniature and large and finally I will be making a hand.

My final output is in the form of a hand placed on a loom. This is to show the profession that is becoming obsolete.

The feeling of being forgotten struck me during a field visit to the hand-loom workers’ spaces. The area had this overpowering noise of the power looms which were all around. Power-looms are cost effective ways to manufacture clothes in bulk, in lesser time, lesser money but also less innovation in terms of designing. Comparatively the hand-loom workers work in a rather dingy room, spent hours working on a piece of cloth and earn meager amount. It is a skill that needs to be practised over years to perfect. Though hand-looms workers had a small space, it was indigenously designed; yet it showed the mark of struggle that the hand-loom sector is going through. I was reminded of my grandmother that day. She was one of those people who believed in sustainable living.  The word ‘sustainable living’ was still not coined then. But she would stitch her own clothes, and the value of hand work was given precedence over any machine made goods. Even the way jewellery was made was valued on the skill of the hand. Today when I look at my own lifestyle, I see a marked difference. It is no longer just about handwork, the prices of such goods have gone up. There are regular articles in the newspaper telling us about goods entering from the Chinese side at much cheaper rate and luring customers from purchasing at times rather durable material made in India. There are regular concerns expressed in the newspaper about the dwindling career of the traditional craftsmen. More optimistic news come in once in a while when some entrepreneur encash on the traditional crafts by selling more contemporary design/ goods at a rather reasonable rate(like FabIndia). But, taking the example of the handloom worker who earn a measly 3000/ monthly weaving silk saris, the struggle might just not end.

I would like to place my work in the factory setting. In India, like we place photos of our ancestors on the walls of our offices. This sculpture would take a similar position