Exclusive: Kallol Datta returns with a new textile-based exhibition for the first time in Mumbai
“Each element given is a marker – of memory, an episodic event, a lived experience.” A few shirts and blouses from the Van Notten 2000 collections, were reworked to make three Jeogoris, in the exact dimensions of the historic and excavated samples of the period of the end of the Joseon of the 18th and 19th centuries. Although Datta claims to have been superficially aware of Van Notten’s work before the donation, I highlight their similarity. Van Notten also left fashion at the height of his career. At a time of massive commercial gains, the quiet retirement of Van Notten looked like a last act of integrity – something that Datta lives. Take for example his documents, “while working on the series based on Korea at the end of the Joseon,” he notes, “I was aware of not using Japanese textiles because of the trauma of the occupation”.
Datta’s work has always asked you to sit down with discomfort, not to solve it. According to his first fashion collections with radical cuts, bulbous forms and an unorthodox style – like a challenge for the zeitgeist – for now, he has long challenged the visual codes that others avoid. “Since its creation,” he said, “the fabric porting act has been political.
Datta’s clothes do not flatter as much as they resist; They exhibited, rebalanced and mocked. Now, while it moves further in the field of textile art, this tension remains, but it has become quieter, deeper and even more disturbing. There may be an unconscious but nuanced comment on the constriction. Like silkworms that escape from their own cocoons or their clarity emerging after a cold dive that almost stopped your heart rate. Pressure becomes a portal in the work of Datta – not to suffering, but to clarity. Madness is not in the artist, but in systems built around normality. This exhibition is no exception to these structures; He reflects it.
