All Fair in Magic White

Hande uses fabric as a medium to narrate a satirical story that comments on the rapid urban growth and aspirational plans for the revitalisation of Mumbai that are rooted in the history of class, race, and power given its colonial and industrial history. The story moves to Dharavi, in Mumbai, the second-largest slum in the world, with the largest conglomeration of sweatshops and small-scale industries in India. The work features traditional wooden block prints to create a series of works on cloth that form a storyboard depicting characters, landscapes, and topographies of the city. These works are incorporated into a stop motion film, complete with a script that discusses South Asian notions of feminine beauty, associated with fair skin, to highlight the persisting inequalities within the city.

The work was featured as part of the exhibition 'Connecting Threads: Textiles in Contemporary Practice'. The exhibition was curated by Tasneem Zakaria Mehta and Puja Vaish and attempts to trace textile practices, traditions and histories in Contemporary Indian Art.