Godhadi, Labour of Protesting: anti-caste lineage (Installation view). Ladder Space, 2023. Photo: Anders Aarvik.
Press release, July 2023
Ladder Space presents Labour of Protesting: anti-caste lineage by Godhadi. The ignited efforts of an accumulated desire to investigate, acknowledge and reveal the collective marginality of proud Dalit feminists. The exhibition is a negotiation between suppressed memories of shame, an unfolding of Dalit care through allegorical materiality, healing through acts of making, and a determination to resist the centuries-old oppressive injustices that pervade every dalit body.
The spectator is invited to be immersed in a conversation and allegorical exchange about caste oppression. Connecting with the tenderness of ‘Godhadi’ (Maharashtrian quilt) woven by late artists Satyawati Kadam and Sugandha Kadam, the uncooked spices made by artist Rajani Kadam as a reminder of the socio-political, diplomatic lines which divide the skies and lands. The values of protest chants echo across and beyond the space of knowledge. A glimpse into a recent journey in the documentary film Rakhan made by Sam McNeil and Abhaya Rajani where the Kharat family and their goats take us through the changing social and physical landscape of their lives in a small village of Sindhudurg, Maharashtra.
Godhadi, Labour of Protesting: anti-caste lineage, 2023 (cotton fabric, Dalit menstrual blood, steel stand, wooden poles, blue woollen thread, cow dung, striked Manusmriti verses, 2x 150x160mm). Photo: Anders Aarvik.
Godhadi, Labour of Protesting: anti-caste lineage, 2023 (cotton fabric, Dalit menstrual blood, steel stand, wooden poles, blue woollen thread, cow dung, striked Manusmriti verses, 2x 150x160mm). Photo: Anders Aarvik.
Godhadi, Labour of Protesting: anti-caste lineage, 2023 (cotton fabric, Dalit menstrual blood, steel stand, wooden poles, blue woollen thread, cow dung, striked Manusmriti verses, 2x 150x160mm). Photo: Anders Aarvik.
Godhadi, Labour of Protesting: anti-caste lineage, 2023 (cotton fabric, Dalit menstrual blood, steel stand, wooden poles, blue woollen thread, cow dung, striked Manusmriti verses, 2x 150x160mm). Photo: Anders Aarvik.
Godhadi, Labour of Protesting: anti-caste lineage, 2023 (cotton fabric, Dalit menstrual blood, steel stand, wooden poles, blue woollen thread, cow dung, striked Manusmriti verses, 2x 150x160mm). Photo: Anders Aarvik.
Godhadi, Labour of Protesting: anti-caste lineage, 2023 (cotton fabric, Dalit menstrual blood, steel stand, wooden poles, blue woollen thread, cow dung, striked Manusmriti verses, 2x 150x160mm). Photo: Anders Aarvik.
Abhaya Rajani’s hands, fingers and each nerve have been pugnaciously engaged in the process of striking against the Brahmanical and patriarchal violence through blue anti-caste threads. The labour of the marginalised once again finds its way to being concealed, invisible, in the veins of threads, transported from London to Copenhagen.
Godhadi and Ladder Space will be seeking to construct a safe space of anti-caste solidarity.
– Text by Abhaya Rajani.
Godhadi, AS A DALIT WOMAN ARTIST I CHOOSE NOT TO BE SILENT ANYMORE IN THE BRAHMINICAL, PATRIARCHAL, RACIST AND HOMOPHOBIC WORLD OF OPPRESSIVE INJUSTICES – Protest chant 01, 2022 (Dalit menstrual blood, white cotton fabric, thread, unwanted/used clothes, cotton sheet, 82x74mm). Photo: Anders Aarvik.
Godhadi, IN THE BRAHMINICAL PATRIARCHY, THE MOST PERILOUS ENTITY IS A PROUD DALIT FEMINIST – Protest chant 02, 2022 (Dalit menstrual blood, white cotton fabric, thread, unwanted/used clothes, cotton sheet, 82x74mm). Photo: Anders Aarvik.
Godhadi, IN THE BRAHMINICAL PATRIARCHY, THE MOST PERILOUS ENTITY IS A PROUD DALIT FEMINIST – Protest chant 02, 2022 (Dalit menstrual blood, white cotton fabric, thread, unwanted/used clothes, cotton sheet, 82x74mm). Photo: Anders Aarvik.
Godhadi, AS A DALIT WOMAN ARTIST I CHOOSE NOT TO BE SILENT ANYMORE IN THE BRAHMINICAL, PATRIARCHAL, RACIST AND HOMOPHOBIC WORLD OF OPPRESSIVE INJUSTICES – Protest chant 01, 2022 (Dalit menstrual blood, white cotton fabric, thread, unwanted/used clothes, cotton sheet, 82x74mm). Photo: Sam McNeil.
Godhadi is a collective hosted by Abhaya Rajani, a London-based Dalit queer feminist artist along with the India-based artists, Rajani Kadam, the late Satyawati Kadam, and the late Sugandha Kadam. Through dalit lineage and their work which was considered womanly duties, they are dreaming to reimagine their labour in a contemporary art context. They are invested in constructing safe spaces through their collective transdisciplinary practices to resist centuries-old oppressive injustices of Brahminical patriarchy.
Godhadi, Labour of Protesting: anti-caste lineage (Installation view). Ladder Space, 2023. Photo: Anders Aarvik.
Godhadi, Aaji and her words 01/02/03, 2023 (Dalit menstrual blood, white cotton fabric, blue thread, Godhadi Thread, 300x300mm).
Photo: Anders Aarvik.
Godhadi, Aaji and her words 01/02/03, 2023 (Dalit menstrual blood, white cotton fabric, blue thread, Godhadi Thread, 300x300mm).
Photo: Anders Aarvik.
Godhadi, Labour of Protesting: anti-caste lineage (Installation view). Ladder Space, 2023. Photo: Anders Aarvik.
Godhadi, Rakhan, 2022-23 (moving image, 40” monitor, 17:51 min. Associated area with mattress, saris belonging to Abhaya Rajani and Rajani Kadam, anti-caste literary material, a table with exhibition booklets with writings by Abhaya Rajani and Rajani Kadam. The monitor rests on a godhadi by late Satyawati Kadam). Photo: Anders Aarvik.
Godhadi, Rakhan, 2022-23 (moving image, 40” monitor, 17:51 min. Associated area with mattress, saris belonging to Abhaya Rajani and Rajani Kadam, anti-caste literary material, a table with exhibition booklets with writings by Abhaya Rajani and Rajani Kadam. The monitor rests on a godhadi by late Satyawati Kadam). Photo: Anders Aarvik.
Godhadi, Rakhan, 2022-23 (moving image, 40” monitor, 17:51 min. Associated area with mattress, saris belonging to Abhaya Rajani and Rajani Kadam, anti-caste literary material, a table with exhibition booklets with writings by Abhaya Rajani and Rajani Kadam. The monitor rests on a godhadi by late Satyawati Kadam). Photo: Anders Aarvik.
Godhadi, Rakhan, 2022-23 (moving image, 40” monitor, 17:51 min. Associated area with mattress, saris belonging to Abhaya Rajani and Rajani Kadam, anti-caste literary material, a table with exhibition booklets with writings by Abhaya Rajani and Rajani Kadam. The monitor rests on a godhadi by late Satyawati Kadam). Photo: Anders Aarvik.
Godhadi, Rakhan, 2022-23 (moving image, 17:51 min). Video still.
Godhadi, Rakhan, 2022-23 (moving image, 17:51 min). Video still.
Godhadi, Rakhan, 2022-23 (moving image, 17:51 min). Video still.
Godhadi, Rakhan, 2022-23 (moving image, 17:51 min). Video still.
Godhadi, Rakhan, 2022-23 (moving image, 17:51 min). Video still.
For a conversation on casteism between Abhaya Rajani, Shivani Patel and Aaliah Qureshi, see Harsh Light by A Particular Reality and Bloc Projects.
For information on caste discrimination see International Dalit Solidarity Network.
Curated by Godhadi, Anders Aarvik and Anne Sofie Skjold Møller. The exhibition is supported by The Council for Visual Arts, Vesterbro Lokaludvalg and Copenhagen Municipality.
Opening: Friday the 28th of July, 17-21.
Additional opening hours: July 29 - July 30: 12-16.
By appointment: July 31 - August 6, 2023.
More info: www.ladder.dk