Kritika Manchanda

KRITIKA MANCHANDA

The sublime void - interweaving a ghost-like memory.

Ghostly voids echo the translucent layers of fabric, crafting a dialogue between the ephemeral and the tangible. Invisible threads invite viewers to traverse the artist’s recollections while paying homage to the archival beauty of a bygone era frozen in time. The typography is reminiscent of the artist’s fragmented memories of her school days growing up in India and antiquated archival library systems.

The concept is an exploration of an ephemeral narrative created for Kritika Manchanda, an artist blurring the lines between fashion and art, as well as the physical and psychological. Delicate materials of paper and fabric are stamped, printed, and compressed by hand enhancing the garments as art objects.

Kritika Manchanda is an artist and designer born in India and based in New York. Her work spans across Fine Art and Textiles, exploring themes of identity, space, and memory. In her artistic approach she critically examines colonial history as it relates to the practice of dress. Manchanda creates works that seem to exist in a state of altered dimension blurring the boundaries between the physical and psychological.

The origin of the insignia comes from Lucknow, India. Lucknow’s traditional white shadow-work embroidery, Chikankari is often featured in Manchanda’s collections. Symbols of mermaids and fish adorned many of Lucknow’s ornate gateways and royal insignias from the Nawabi era. The mermaids came to be a symbol for good luck, and prosperity as they marked the golden era of history for Awadh in the 18th century.

“Clothing is an exercise of memory. It makes me explore the past.” Louise Bourgeois

Garments are packaged in museum archival boxes and wrapped in layers of glassine paper.

The garment hang tags are inspired from the voids left behind on library cards. Library cards are hand-stamped, printed, and compressed inside an additional layer of hand-stamped glassines. Every card is one-of-a-kind and echoes the ghost-like quality of the garments.

The garment labels are printed on cotton organdy tape, taking their inspiration from the archival tape used in museums for vintage haute-couture and historical costume collections.

Layers of transluscent packaging materials are compressed inside cotton organdy mirroring Kritika Manchanda’s compressed paper-like garments.

The archival library system translated for the digital website.

Photos by Adrianna Glaviano