Visitors to Dubai have the last month to see the exhibition of Shivani Aggarwal in 1×1 Art Gallery in Al Quoz, Dubai. It is named “The Traps We Weave” and the works will be on display till 31 December 2022.
Shivani Aggarwal is an Indian Contemporary artist who was born in 1975. She has widely exhibited her works in India and other countries and had seven solo exhibitions in cities like London, Lahore, Mumbai, Delhi and Dubai.
The act of weaving for Shivani is a meditative, contemplative practice which can serve as an allusion to the elaborate traps we weave around ourselves and then get imprisoned in, due to thinking within our social, cultural and political structures.
“The ‘thread’ sometimes symbolizes the social fiber, relations and conflicts, and at other times, draws reference to blood vessels. The threads, throbbing with life create intricate, swirling patterns, shocking and compelling, twisting and turning, infinitely into a cycle of decay and repair. I often employ the images of sewing, knitting, using the related tools in my work to emphasize connotations with warmth, home, protection and childhood, and also to revisit and reexamine the cultural preconceptions surrounding it”, Shivani Aggarwal explains in her artist’s statement.
The interwoven threads form a pattern, which then changes its form and becomes a fabric. Shivani thinks that we are victims of the uncomfortable restrictive spaces, notions and boundaries due to our greed and need for power and security. At the end it creates emptiness within us. The idea of the ‘self’ becomes dysfunctional or compromised due to circumstances, pressures and societal conditioning. Those self-doubts and conditionings are almost woven and stitched into our fabric.
A centrepiece of the exhibition is the crocheted wire work Trap. This is Shivani’s ongoing project woven by her stitch by stitch. She thinks about it as “never-ending”. “The metal thread becomes an element, which defines these boundaries. It marks a territory defining emptiness, […] giving emptiness a lucid physical form along with it becoming a shield between the inside and the outside space”, says Shivani.
To get more information about The Traps We Weave, please visit the official web page of the exhibition.
You might also be interested in visiting No Condition Is Permanent by Taysir Batniji.
