Look Book : Painted From Memory

The Ekavalli Foundation, Kanakavalli’s initiative to nurture and promote talent, recently commissioned a photographic collective by Uma Damle.

This series of theatre portraits and still life images reflects the artist’s aesthetic, with the kanjivaram drape as the focal point of the narrative. In the chiaroscuro technique, used by Renaissance painters like Caravaggio, familiar objects seem to emerge out of the darkness of the past, into beautifully muted, memory faded colour. The line between photograph and painting is blurred by the use of lighting and the warmth of the colours.

Celebrating the ideation of memory and the timelessness of beauty, these images find contemporary resonance, while evoking a sense of classicism, referencing European realism, made popular by artists such as Raja Ravi Varma.

Together, the photographs become a memory board, bringing together diverse elements that form the essence of the kanjivaram. The sari is seen here as a handed down keeper of memories, from weaver to wearer and mother to daughter; the warp and weft that are bound together with strength, grace and beauty on the loom, softened and made rich with recall.   

Explore our Vault collective that reflects this timeless aesthetic, the very essence of the classic kanjivaram.

Shop the beautifully crafted accompanying notecard set here