Shruti Mahajan

Shruti Mahajan’s latest series of works, titled ‘Will/ Wasiyat‘, in paper and fabric reflects her perennial interest in memory, language, personal history, and archive.

Responding to the contrast embedded in the word will as a legal document that communicates a person’s final wishes pertaining to possessions and dependents, on the one hand, also means a desire or determination(to live) on the other hand. The present times have brought in a lot of uncertainties in one’s existence, and there has been an upsurge in people taking legal help to put their wills together also now at an early stage of their lives.

The set of paper drawings respond to some of these ideas and highlight the interrelationship of the materiality of paper with the documentation.

In the fabric work, she has used tussar silk, a fabric that embodies the paradox of life and death in the process of its making. The silkworms are boiled to death only to be taken out of their cocoons and the silk yarn to be collected. The yarn then gets a new life in the woven fabric. By incorporating pieces of tussar silk in her works, Shruti has added layers to the multi-faceted notion of will.