Rakhi Peswani’s art practice has significantly contributed to critical understanding and integrating craft as an important element of artistic idiom, challenging the age-old hierarchy of art and craft in the mainstream art world. Her works have a distinctive visual sensibility infused with multiple discourses of social, political and gender identity. She uses paraphernalia of materials and media that play a significant role both in physical and conceptual terms. In her series of works titled ‘Conditions of Infirmity’ shared for the show ‘Material Metaphor’ deals with the critical understanding of labour and craftsmanship in the society located through an interesting integration of materials and objects from mundane life. It tries to reorient our association and attention to the often neglected part of our life and society which is the labour and craftsmanship, without which even the basic amenities would have been difficult to get. The works consist of diverse materials and objects that locate the idea in different registers, sheer materials, the painted form, built or embroidered forms, and materiality of historic images creates an interactive experience that explores spatiality, tactility, painterly and literary viewing of the works. It traces an intriguing factor of the changing nature of a society and the fading connection between our everyday life and craft or the labour behind different elements and objects surrounding our life.
