anusuya
krishnaswamy

Fresh Laundry emerged from a moment of pause, the act of doing laundry. I am drawn to it both as a routine and symbolic act, one that reflects of attention, care and regularity, and for which I can draw parallels to the act of weaving. Post-weaving, the fabric was dyed as a single piece. The act of submerging the textile into the dye bath and watching it soak and spin reminded me of washing clothes, the role of repetition in a making process.

 

An early association to freshness, a kind of renewing of the textiles, with laundering influenced the colour and material choices. Fresh Laundry is a handwoven tapestry that utilises the strength of its wool warp in combination with a variety of contrasting weft materials, ranging from a super-wash wool, cotton and viscose to polyester and polyamides. These give the fabric a soft, grounded base, on which slippery, shiny yarns glisten and run through.

​

There is this pile, forming in corners and baskets, climbing quicker than the days seem to go by. With weight on my limbs, in clockwork stillness, how many days have I arrived here? On the threshold, the sheets and clothes shift, sometimes in the foreground, and sometimes in the background. Amidst the hulking mass of mess, everything is a tangle, a pile of knots and folds. A damp, wet mass. My hands feel before my eyes see, palms damp and wrinkly. In the quiet, working out the knots, straightening the lines. But somehow, they remain enmeshed friends, as a river down the green mountain, mingled beyond parting.