Labour of Protesting: anti-caste labour

Godhadi at Ladder Space, Copenhagen

Ladder Space presents Labour of Protesting: anti-caste lineage by Godhadi. The ignited efforts of an accumulated desire to investigate, acknowledge and reveal the collective marginality of proud Dalit feminists. The exhibition is a negotiation between suppressed memories of shame, an unfolding of Dalit care through allegorical materiality, healing through acts of making, and a determination to resist the centuries-old oppressive injustices that pervade every dalit body.

The spectator is invited to be immersed in a conversation and allegorical exchange about caste oppression. Connecting with the tenderness of ‘Godhadi’ (Maharashtrian quilt) woven by late artists Satyawati Kadam and Sugandha Kadam, the uncooked spices made by artist Rajani Kadam as a reminder of the socio-political, diplomatic lines which divide the skies and lands. The values of protest chants echo across and beyond the space of knowledge. A glimpse into a recent journey in the documentary film Rakhan made by Sam McNeil and Abhaya Rajani where the Kharat family and their goats take us through the changing social and physical landscape of their lives in a small village of Sindhudurg, Maharashtra.

Abhaya Rajani’s hands, fingers and each nerve have been pugnaciously engaged in the process of striking against the Brahmanical and patriarchal violence through blue anti-caste threads. The labour of the marginalised once again finds its way to being concealed, invisible, in the veins of threads, transported from London to Copenhagen. Godhadi and Ladder Space will be seeking to construct a safe space of anti-caste solidarity.

Godhadi is a collective hosted by Abhaya Rajani, a London-based dalit queer feminist artist along with the India-based artists, Rajani Kadam, the late Satyawati Kadam, and the late Sugandha Kadam. Through dalit lineage and their work which was considered womanly duties, they are dreaming to reimagine their labour in a contemporary art context. They are invested in constructing safer spaces through their collective transdisciplinary practices to resist centuries-old oppressive injustices of Brahminical patriarchy, queerphobia and dalit erasure.

Works

within dalit spores

Labour of Protesting: anti-caste lineage

Protest chant 01

Protest chant 02

Aaji and her words 01/02/03