overview

Volume 3, Issue 2 | 2.0 by Kallol Datta abstracts the concept of a garment to investigate how properties of behavioral change inform the patterns, textures, contours, and dimensions of textile objects as the shadows of social fabrics.

A continuation of the artist’s ongoing inquiry into native clothing practices in South-West Asia, North Africa, the Indian Subcontinent and the Korean Peninsula, this exhibition presents Datta’s signature process of deformation as reformation, this time with an emphasis on clothing items donated from Manipur, India and the Aomori prefecture of Japan. As with previous oeuvres, 2.0 employs inversions and pattern permutations to memorialize the past lives of a garment while constructing new spectrums of form and function through mending practices and adornment as amulet.

An evolving approach in Datta’s practice since 2019, works in 2.0 are designed without a body in mind. To shape these pieces, Datta poses questions in place of mannequins, using inquiries into clothing as a cultural marker as the axis around which to arrest his folds, drapes, layers, and pleats. The result is a suggestion of specters rather than figures, which gesture to the garment as a first line of defense, a first form of relief, and a final relic of embodiment.

Volume 3, Issue 2 | 2.0 further inverts the garment’s subjugating effect by displaying fabric forms ensconced by a forest form. Here, time remains an operative material, morphing foliage over the course of the exhibition just as the textiles themselves have been composted. In this shapeshifting environment, the viewer is prompted to consider what legacy lives on when a fabric meant for wearing itself becomes worn; how form informs life and life informs form.

About the artist

Kallol Datta (b. 1983) is a clothes maker who lives and works in Kolkata, India. A cornerstone of his work is extensive creative research into clothing practices, native to the South West Asia and North Africa, the Indian Subcontinent, and the Korean Peninsula. He had his first solo in 2017 at Experimenter Gallery, Kolkata and has been part of residencies at KHOJ International Artists Association, New Delhi and T.A.J. Residency and SKE projects, Bengaluru. Kallol was awarded the Arts Network Asia Grant in 2019, a finalist of the Jameel Prize in 2021 and one of the winners of the TAF London Emerging Artist Awards in 2022. He has exhibited at Aomori Contemporary Art Centre; Aomori, Beirut Design Fair, Centro Cultural La Moneda; Santiago, India Art Fair; New Delhi, Museo Franklin Rawson; San Juan, National Museums Scotland; Edinburgh, Nomad Monaco and Victoria and Albert Museum; London. Kallol is currently curating the inaugural edition of the Kolkata Queer Arts Month 2023 and is on the curatorial team of the STOF Biennale 2024, Arnhem, NL.