Medium: Acrylic paint and ink on paper
Dimensions: 11.7 x 19.5 inches
Year: 2024
About the artwork
The work employs illegibility and scribbled text as a deliberate strategy to explore the complexities of emotional labour and the tension between confession and concealment. The scribbles act as a protective layer, a defence mechanism that complicates the viewer's access to the confession, hinting at the inherent violence that might come with such exposure.
The tension between visibility and invisibility in the work illustrates the complexities of emotional labour. By making the act of writing difficult to read, the work emphasizes the internalised forms of violence that people, especially marginalised individuals, experience when they attempt to express their feelings or resist oppressive structures. The scribbles are both an invitation and a barrier, drawing the viewer into a personal space while simultaneously holding them at a distance.
“The Footnote” critiques the systemic violence imposed by societal expectations, which demands emotional and artistic labour but often erases or commodifies it.
About the artist
Saviya Lopes is a visual artist, based in Vasai (Bassein), India. She graduated from Rachna Sansad AFAC, Mumbai and has participated in various group exhibitions in India and across the globe since 2015. She was a participating artist and later the Director at Clark House Initiative, Mumbai.
Coming from the community of East Indian Catholics, she often works with her native history, through family archives and oral narratives; drawing upon activities like quilt making by her grandmother as manifestations of dissent. Her work deftly unpicks; reimagines history and reconsiders it for future generations. It never wavers in choosing a visual language to reinterpret what is lost. Her works really speak on a feminist key, intersectional, where subtlety, transparency, and delicacy convey stories of violence, heritage, and colonialism. And so much more that there is to think from them. She is passionate about the role of women in relationship to labour and textile histories. Lopes’ artistic practice draws from experiences in the spaces she inhabits. She looks at the body as an active agent of societal protest and symbolic value. Her work shows interest in the interrelation between body, language, culture and navigation of spaces.
Solo and group exhibitions include an exhibition at Clark House Initiative, Bombay (2016); Dakar Biennale (2016); Historica – Republican Aesthetics at IMMA, Ireland (2016); Stories My Country Told Me, Asia Culture Centre, Gwan Pompidou, Paris (2017); Working Practices, The Showroom, London (2018); The Crown Letter Project, Foundation Fiminco, Paris (2021); Bienalsur, Argentina (2021); “No More Ephemeral Bodies | Solo at Kathiwada City House, Mumbai. She has been twice invited to South Korea for the Gwan Biennale as a fellow to participate and has participated as a visiting speaker at the Asia Art Space, Network Asia, South Korea. She was on the curatorial team for the Kochi Students Biennale 2022-23.
