Bright colours support the backdrop of Kawita’s twisted and curled body, baring the weight of human consumption and selfish behaviour. Deliberately chosen to mimic supermarket colours to entice buyers, these colours play a communicative role as important as the actions captured in Kawita’s work.
The artist, Kawita Vatanaiyankur, is recognised for her video and performance work since her Tools Series from 2012. Merging her own body into domestic appliances, together she uses her form and total being to sculpture a representation of the female endurance.
She continues her work by exploring similar themes, allowing different objects to direct her body and also using her body to manipulate the object in return. This relationship as explored through Kawita’s work directly addresses the limits of the human condition, both physically and mentally.
Labour as a subject has been a recurring field of research for the artist, particularly in the idea of machinery and repetitive action. Her body as a machine, the artist performs a focused singular actions in a loop. Each sole movement, expands the performance into multiple layers of social issues, engaging with the audience to spark discussions about the women’s rights, the labour industry, the wheel of dharma and the human tenacity for example.
With each piece, Kawita plans, designs and shoots her performance herself with the help of her mother and house keeper. Every piece requires Kawita to ultimately survive the shoot as she performs them, often times to the point of collapsing. To which the artist has commented on this experience as like becoming an object pushed to its limit like in her Performing Textiles (2018-2019) series.
