Welancora Gallery presents In my Home Clothes, a solo exhibition of new and recent work by Renluka Maharaj. The exhibition runs June 8 to July 13, 2023. This will be Maharaj’s first solo exhibition with Welancora.
Born in Trinidad and Tobago, Renluka Maharaj utilizes sourced photographs, textiles, sculpture, research and travel to create mixed media compositions that investigate how history, migration, memory, religion, and gender inform identity in general and that of her family in particular. The artist’s family lineage can be traced back to India during the 19th century when forced indentured servitude replaced African slave labor on sugarcane plantations in the Caribbean.
Maharaj’s layered compositions consist of small screen shots of Indo-Caribbean women featured on postcards sold throughout Europe to promote tourism during the 19th century. The smaller screen shots are reassembled in a much larger format to create a new hand painted photograph, printed on canvas, bordered by textiles and embellished with beading. The resulting work serves as a counter to the culturally diluted poses and attire that these women had to wear to present a palatable idea of “Indian” while furthering the view of the Indian subcontinent as a playground and Indians as dehumanized objects of fetish.
Artist pictured above, photo courtesy of Welancora Gallery
