Lavanya Mani

Born in 1977,Lavanya Mani started Ph.D in 2001 from the Dept. of Art History & Aesthetics M.S.U. Baroda, under Dr. Shivaji Pannikar. She pursued MFA in Painting in (1999-2001) from The Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S.U Baroda and B FA in Painting (1995-1999), from The Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S.U Baroda.

Over the last few years, Lavanya Mani have been working with various techniques associated with textiles such as embroidery, tie and dye, appliqué, batik etc in conjunction with painting. She talks about her works saying that, “ Cloth has been at the center of a long set of historical associations between femininity, decorativeness and deception. These have to do, on the one hand, with the way various art / craft practices such as embroidery, knitting, needlework etc, were seen primarily as “women’s work”, as well as to the perceived sinfulness/ excess of the decorative, within a patriarchal economy, that privileged austerity and functionality. This could also be related to what was considered to be the inherent deceptiveness of cloth- as its ability to hide as well as reveal, and its ability to change the persona of the wearer; tales and fables, that have been associated with it, emphasize dyeing and changing colors as a narrative device.  Thus, the work titled ‘Fox Story- The Blue Coat’ has tried to explore this idea”.

Lavanya further continues, “What has interested me particularly and in relation to this set of works, are the correspondences between ‘textiles’ and ‘text’ and metaphors relating the two such as– ‘to spin a yarn’, ‘to follow a thread of narration’, ‘to weave a tale’, ‘to embroider a tale’, as well as to the etymological links between fabric- fabricate, craft – crafty, text - textile (derived from the latin ‘texere’ meaning to weave) etc. Hence in the present works, I have tried to engage with these relations.

Lavanya has received the Nasreen Mohamedi Award and has participated in Group Shows in Paris, Hyderabad and Baroda :

July 2006: KAVA (Kashi Award for Visual Art) Kashi Art Galley, Mattancherry, Fort Kochi. 

Oct 2001-2003: Junior Research Fellowship, from the University Grants Commission, New Delhi.

May 2001: Nasreen Mohammedi, Award for Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts MSU Baroda

Lavanya lives and works in Baroda.

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