Pain is invisible; the sufferer has to make noise for it to be acknowledged, treated or accepted. Mumbai-based artist Koshy Brahmatmaj, 34, lives with chronic endometriosis, a painful condition that afflicts millions of women around the world. A recently-concluded exhibition at Anupa Mehta Contemporary Gallery, Mumbai, of her textile-based works, titled how do i make you believe, showed how the lack of quick fix solutions to chronic illness and pain can be, among other things, a starting point for artistic alchemy.
Brahmatmaj’s chosen medium is embroidery—something that social media algorithms would term “grannycore” or “slow living”, and what British embroidery artist Clare Hunter says in her book Threads of Life (2019) a way for women to express, communicate, and create meaning. The artist’s embroidered works, images of which she puts up regularly on social media, subvert the social media-fuelled aspirational lifestyle credo about handwork. What is seen as a rebellion against turbo-charged Artificial Intelligence-efficiency that defines the age. Brahmatmaj is more concerned with an answer to this question: How do you make someone believe the pain that you can’t see? The artist says, “It comes from my own experiences of having to prove my pain while I appear functional and productive to the world.”
Embroidery isn’t as peaceful or calming as it is made out to be,” she explains. “Imagine, I am jabbing at a piece of fabric with a pointy tool over my fingers. The process becomes my expression of anger, my frustration and pain —within the limits of my body, without hurting myself or anybody else.” Over several years now that she has been diagnosed with and treated for aggressive endometriosis, embroidery has helped her sit with her pain, understand why it magnifies in one part of her body over another, and even what could have triggered it.
She was 28. While studying Performance and Fashion in London, she arrived at a diagnosis over gruelling visits to England’s NHS outlets where her pain was questioned and even dismissed.“Illness disrupts time, productivity and consistency. It is not linear. It has constant ups and downs. A discipline that is often expected in artistic practice becomes difficult when your needs differ every day. It is your body that decides the limits.” Instead of resisting this, Brahmatmaj builds with it. “Care becomes a method of working. I rest when I need to, I work when I can. Slowness, repetition and pauses become part of the work,” she says.
The exhibition had nine works of embroidery on textile. A hand-crafted book and a sculpture complete the show. Anupa Mehta, curator and owner at the gallery, chose Brahmatmaj’s art through an open call that included 190 applicants. “I shortlisted the work due to its strong narrative quality and tactile medium. Koshy speaks very honestly and openly about living with a debilitating health condition. This narrative contains a political statement about productivity. Two other curators, Veerangana Solanki and Shaleen Wadhwana vetted the final list along with me,” says Mehta.
Working primarily with scrap and leftover fabrics collected over time, Brahmatmaj allows material to carry memory, geography, and duration. The process is not linear. It mirrors the body it comes from. The need to constantly validate one’s own body becomes the core of her art. She studied art at Mumbai’s Shrishti School of Design and later in London. Born to Bihari parents — her mother, who turned to acting in mid-life after retiring from her regular job, is from Madhubani and father, a film critic—Brahmatmaj says it was unthinkable for her sister and her to think of doing something that didn’t involve artistic skills.
The embroidered processes in these works can be seen as part of a genre that has historically been shaped by physical suffering and illness. Among several others, Mexican legend Frida Kahlo, who lived with lifelong pain after contracting polio as a child, created works like The Broken Column, which depicts physical suffering, medical imagery, disability and emotional endurance; American painter and sculptor Hannah Wilke documented her experience with cancer in the celebrated photographic series Intra-Venus; Indian artists such as Sonaksha Iyenger and Reshma Valliappan articulate the anxiety and grind of mental illness in their canvasses. At this moment, wellness, health and illness are beginning to be part of online dialogue—or noise, however you see it—and endometriosis especially is a subject that millions of women are talking about. The award-winning short film, This is Endometriosis, by Georgie Wileman and Matt Houghton, based on Wileman’s own experiences with the disease, has become a global movement for awareness and solutions.
Brahmatmaj’s how do i make you believe contains memory as well as currency. She best explains why: “Fabric touches skin. It protects, absorbs and carries memories. Textile practices are historically tied to gendered and undervalued labour, similar to care work… The bodies in this series are not rushing anywhere. They simply exist — taking a moment to breathe, to enjoy, to rest.”
Sanjukta Sharma is an independent writer.