Lakshmi

This photograph is from the series Native Women of South India: Manners and Customs (2000–2004), a collaborative project by contemporary artists, Clare Arni and Pushpamala N., in which they recreate and deconstruct ‘types’ of women from popular and historical sources. It uses the genre of performance photography to raise questions about female representation, art, colonialism, modernity and more. Here, Pushpamala is seen as Lakshmi, posed in the iconic style popularised by prints from the Raja Ravi Varma press.