A live performance in a SoBo gallery engages with the artworks of an exhibition to explore what it is to live under layers of skin and clothes
Installation view of Birthday Suit
Tulle — its mention is bound to spring thoughts of something delicate and pretty. But in artist Saviya Lopes’ hands, tulle embodies many more concepts. As gentle and lightweight as it is, tulle isn’t really soft, like silk or cotton. It’s made of stiff netting and is quite durable. And Lopes uses something as sheer and enduring as tulle for the main installation in her ongoing show, No More Ephemeral Bodies at Kathiawada City House in Worli, to prompt you to look past the ephemeral aspects of human nature and lives as we are conditioned to believe, for what and who we really are.
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Arora in a moment from the performance. Pic Courtesy/Aadya Jajodia
The installation, called Birthday Suit, consists of sheer tulle dresses suspended mid-air as if the people who had been wearing them vanished all of a sudden, leaving not all their clothing but only one enduring layer, like a legacy. Being sheer, the installation guides you to look beyond it and ponder. Whatever your thoughts may be, you can watch them be brought into the space through dance by filmmaker and performer Gia Singh Arora. As a response to Lopes’ work, Arora will introduce a live dance piece that explores what it means to peel off the layers of clothing, a metaphor Lopes uses for the ephemeral nature and cultural identities of our bodies, in pursuit of truth.
Using the term bodies to highlight what matters in the face of impermanence, Lopes explains, “For me, the body is a medium that can portray and capture the passing of time.” Her work and concepts, which have been created over the course of six years, showcase a duality of the body — fragile but strong; one that can be weaponised but also the source of love and comfort; one of resistance but also one that is subjected to abuse and control; one that expresses but is also contorted to fit identity narratives. In response to this, as Arora moves through clothes of tulle, she navigates the nuances of the bodies we’ve built in search of a safe space between nude, which is socially accepted and considered sexy, and naked, which is considered shameful. In this in-between space, we find skin. Mumbai-based Arora tells us that like sheer tulle, skin can be bare and vulnerable but also enduring; it’s porous but still protective. Through the act of removal of the tulle layers, can this place of sheerness be our true selves? Through structured and improvised dance, Arora will don a character that will have transformed itself by the end of the dance. The 30-minute performance will offer the audience a chance to participate in the installation as well, and will include a brief walkthrough with the artist.
Saviya Lopes and Gia Singh Arora
The artworks from this show are being presented in India for the first time, after travelling to international shows in Ireland, London, Australia and Paris. Each of the 10 installations in this exhibition dismantles the hyper-normalisation of oppression and assault on bodies, and leads to the last installation and conclusion — Birthday Suit, which attempts to acknowledge the experience and emotional labour over the temporary physicality of our body.
On: July 23, 5.30 pm to 6.30 pm (performance)
Till: August 13 (exhibition)
At: Kathiawada City House, Sir Pochkhanawala Road, Worli
Log on to: @kathiwadacityhouse
Cost: Rs 500
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