Materials: Handcrafted in Stainless steel.

The Body Project. Ruminations on Beauty by Nisha Mathew Ghosh

This set of woven objects-of-adornment for the body, simply yet intentionally mirrors minimally the contours and profiles of body parts subjected to ornamentation such as neck, ear, hand and foot, referencing biblical text. It subliminally contrasts two narratives of the formation of the beauty of the human body; evolution, where form is evolved via lean selection of fittest, versus, the creationist where an omniscient loving Creator God has fashioned in beauty and original pre-Fall perfectness. This series of objects maps body contours to engage in a reflection of beauty, to provoke and juxtapose post-colonial understandings to the hope embodied in the reference text “for it was You who created my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I will praise You because I have been fearfully and wonderfully made”

The work is a rumination on BEAUTY, which looks reflectively at the idea of a journey and MAPS perspectives. The venation of a leaf reminiscent of a network of woven MEMORIES, a pathway on a terrain, the network crosses, weaves and reinforces the author’s premise, that MEMORIES create a scaffolding for future imaginations. As perspectives of the form changes on moulding, or pinching the form in, or twisting a new unfolding and dynamic view of a circumstance may open up to enrich and change perspective. The flexible nature of this TOUCH and MOULD venation makes a reference to a garment, flitting fashion, and notions of beauty external to inner beauty.

This fine handwoven work is also about fragility, and its transformative reality from youthful, beautiful and productive state to a new state of dissipating ephemeral beauty. The sheath presents the idea of covering or surface versus inner venation or structure; the material-natural-physical reveals new latent beauty and meaning when form is undone.

A part of this project was showcased by Bose Krishnamachari, Curator, at the Women Artists Show,  Bodhi Art Gallery, Elphinstone Estate, Mumbai