Edition of 3
16.5 x 12.5 x 3.5 inches
Muslin cloth, Waterproof pigment ink, Wood
About the artwork
DEAR TEREZA…
Welcome to a house of mothers and daughters, built of care, respect and patient work. It is a house like no other, inhabited only by women and their stories, it is the perfect safe space. It doesn’t present the ambiguity of other houses: it is always kingdom, never prison, always palace of tenderness, never of violence. Here, artist Saviya Lopès speaks to and from the women of her family, her grand-mother, her mother and through them all the others, in an intergenerational dialogue that holds questions of womanhood, tradition and feminism.
Many conversations have built this place, many words and gestures have been woven into these relationships that Lopès scours, looking for signs of quotidian resistance. They are kept in a cloth book stitched over 5 years in discussion with her Aaya - her grandmother - the starting point of all this body of work.
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, transparence, delicacy convey stories of violence, of heritage, 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’s 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 inter- relation 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, Gwangju Biennale (2016); Gondwana Series – An intervention at Centre 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 Gwangju Biennale as a fellow to participate and has participated as a visiting speaker at the Asia Art Space, Network Asia, South Korea. She is currently on the curatorial team for the Kochi Students Biennale 2022.
