This project explores the relationship between clothes, people and self-perception. Artists such as Frida Kahlo have used clothing to represent their inner worlds, as a visual metaphor for their many feelings and private thoughts. Here, I have used the act of putting on a saree to investigate my relationship to the traditional textile. I use it often to say something about myself, with it being inextricably tied to my many identities—Indian, woman, textile designer, artist. However, in the process of shedding an identity and putting another one on (quite literally), there is an overlap of personhood, object, consciousness and shifting self perceptions. My objective in this body of work is to capture the in-between and undefined in the privacy of the inner world where one exists as the many versions of themselves. 

 

The process of putting a saree on finds the wearer enveloped in a series of private moments, flowing through each stage, draping the textile, adjusting it and arranging it intuitively to ensure it hugs their form properly and is flattering. Accessorising and putting on makeup brings together a vision of the self that feels good. 

 

These moments are a reflection of the acute awareness with which one interacts with their clothes (in this instance, a saree) to reach a point of satisfaction with one’s outward appearance by calibrating the outside to match an inner vision. The textiles discarded and adopted in the sequence contain in them a shifting sense of self and beauty in the process of dressing up. 

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