Lakshmi Madhavan

Lakshmi Madhavan is a conceptual artist who works between Mumbai and Balaramapuram, where her textile-based kasavu works have emerged from. Kasavu is the traditional white and gold textile from Kerala that Lakshmi develops collaboratively with the weaving community of Balaramapuram, which is one of the oldest and original handloom weaving centres. Her work guided her to be engaged in community-led interventions extending towards reimagining the future of the craft, technological innovations, and research and documentation initiatives.

Lakshmi brings forth a layered montage of narratives concerning identity, loss, and restitution in her practice while examining the complexities that define the politics of cloth and body, delving into the intersectionality of material, socio-cultural structures and gender codes. In her work, the body is traced with craft and cloth, becoming a powerful symbolic surface on which hierarchies are demarcated and even metaphysical commitments to culture are inscribed. 

For Lakshmi, the kasavu became an umbilical cord to not only traverse back home but also to investigate the history and heritage of the cloth. She attempts to reconfigure the kasavu into a universal cloth, offering the body as a site of redemption and transformation.

Lakshmi has previously worked with the International Artists Collective, a studio and gallery in Copenhagen. She has trained with the German artist, Bernhard Martin at the Summer Academy in Salzburg and has been mentored by the Indian contemporary artist, Jitish Kallat in Mumbai.  She assisted him with the production and planning of his first career retrospective “Here After Here”  at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. Lakshmi was the artist in residence at the India Art Fair 2023, New Delhi. Her recent exhibitions include showings at the NGMA, Mumbai; National Museum, Delhi; Melbourne Museum; Hampi Art Labs, Vijayanagar and the Craft Museum, New Delhi.