Textile artist Lavanya Mani’s work on the British Raj’s tactics to displace India’s textile industry is on display at the inaugural Art Collections of Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts
Hungry for Time is an invitation to epistemic disobedience with Raqs Media Collective, at the Art Collections of the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Pic Courtesy/Iris Ranzinger
Textile artist Lavanya Mani has caught the attention of the international art community with her exceptional body of work for a while now. Her ability to create moving expressions through her art has been a matter of great interest. Her piece, Hungry for Time, is currently on display in Vienna, and is a commentary on the imperialistic wrongdoings during the British Raj. “The piece refers to the story, The Emperor’s New Clothes, as well as the machine that had just begun selling in India at the time — the Singer sewing machine. [It’s] a commentary on how the British effectively displaced the booming textile industry of India with cheap machine-made copies,” shares Mani.
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Lavanya Mani
Although the piece has a humorous take on the wrongful phenomenon of the time, the commentary on the misguided tendencies of the British Raj does not go unnoticed. “During the Swadeshi Movement, Gandhiji called for a ban on all British goods and imports. Interestingly, the only machine that Gandhiji did not mind was the Singer sewing machine as he felt the machine helped poor Indians and homemakers earn a living,” she explains about the episode that inspired this piece. “For me, the work — Emperor’s New Machine — in many ways was the leitmotif of her exhibition at Chemould, titled, In Praise of Folly, evoking Gandhi, who practised Swadeshi as an economic philosophy, but accepting the use of the Singer machine, because for him this very sewing machine was the symbol of empowerment for women,” says Shireen Gandhy, creative director at Chemould Prescott Road, adding that Mani’s use of fabric and colour is metaphoric in joining the dots — both between her process as an artist and her reading of a history so intrinsically woven into the content.
Shireen Gandhy
Mani’s art is in esteemed company at the gallery. “Raqs Media [a Delhi-based collective involved in art curations] has been really gracious, and it is great to have been even given a chance to display my work at such an august venue alongside brilliant artists. My work is juxtaposed with some of the greatest artists such as Rembrandt and Egon Schele, to name a few. To see my work among these stalwarts is a great honour,” she signs off.
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