Spandita Malik: Jāḷī—Meshes of Resistance
April 3 - May 10, 2025
PRESS RELEASE | IMAGES
“A quiet legacy passes between women through embroidery and handcraft—an inherited resistance. With each stitch, they inscribe their strength and stories, defying the oppressor in thread.” - Spandita Malik
Robert Mann Gallery is pleased to present Spandita Malik’s debut solo exhibition with the gallery: Jāḷī—Meshes of Resistance, on view from April 3 - May 10, 2025.
Malik, a visual artist from India, lives in New York and spends extended periods of time in India collaborating with a network of women she has formed with the help of several not-for-profit organizations. These organizations support women who are survivors of domestic and gender based violence. Through these organizations, women learn intricate embroidery skills, skills that will help them move towards financial independence. The portraits are made by Malik in the women’s homes, the subject is portrayed as they wish, some covering their faces, some directly gazing at the camera. The photographs are then transferred to Khadi: a hand-spun cloth made from natural fibers including cotton, and sometimes wool and silk. The khadi fabric itself differs from state to state, region to region, and each picture is transferred to khadi that is made local to where the photograph is taken.
The powerful images depicted in this exhibition are a collaboration between artist and sitter. Malik asks the sitter to embroider their portrait, an invitation for the subject to have power over how they are perceived, to assert control over their own image. Focusing on women’s rights and the impact of violence against women, Malik’s poignant work was born in response to the government’s lack of action against cases of rape which made Malik acutely aware of how much these acts of violence have become the norm within the culture.
These women’s stories are stitched into the fibers of the cloth, and once complete, the works travel thousands of miles arriving to Malik emboldened with emotion, stories, community and strength. The craft of creating, a collaborative act of resistance in itself.
“The quiet meditative act of embroidery connects the community into a network with everyone actively taking part. Women mending things. Women holding each other. Each portrait is unique and so specific to each woman but together they form a quilt of interconnectedness, through each of their distinctions rises the relatable human story.” - Sarah Walko
Born in India in 1995, Malik has a Bachelor of Design in Fashion from the National Institute of Fashion Technology, New Delhi, India and a Masters of Fine Art in Photography from The Parsons School of Design, New York. Malik’s work has been widely exhibited nationally and internationally with recent solo exhibitions at The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts, Portland, OR and Baxter Street Camera Club, New York, NY among other locations.
View the exhibition in person and online starting April 3, 2025. Public visiting hours are Tuesday - Friday, 10 a.m. - 4pm, and appointments for private presentations can be scheduled in advance. For additional information and press materials, please contact the gallery by email (mail@robertmann.com).
This Indian photographer’s embroidered portraits dignify domestic abuse victims in North India
BY VOGUE INDIA
Over two years, the New York-based photographer traversed the hinterlands of Rajasthan and Punjab, photographing survivors of domestic abuse. But her process didn’t end at documenting the women. Once the portraits were taken, she transposed them onto homespun khadi cloth and sent them back to the subjects. The women were free to do whatever they wished with their portraits—embroider, paint, tear, stitch, scratch out. Parween embroidered three women around her, her little army. This work of art, in addition to the portraits of women whom Malik consciously sought out, is part of her ‘Nā́rī’ series. When other women heard about ‘Nā́rī’, they reached out to Malik with their own stories, encouraging friends who had suffered through the same atrocities to come forward as well. These portraits became part of a new series linked to ‘Nā́rī’ titled ‘Jāḷī—Meshes of Resistance’.
Visit Vogue India for the full article.
Women behind the lens: ‘Through needle and thread, a quiet defiance of patriarchy’
BY THE GUARDIAN
One of a series of photographs taken across India in which women, many of them abuse survivors, use traditional needlework to embellish portraits of themselves. This is a portrait of Praween Devi, a woman I met in 2019 through a local organisation while working on my project Nā́rī. I met her alongside other women who gather in their back yards to embroider together, sharing stories over cups of chai.
Visit Guardian for the full article.
Spandita Malik: Jāḷī—Meshes of Resistance
BY L'ŒIL DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE
Spandita Malik, a visual artist from India, lives in New York and spends extended periods of time in India collaborating with a network of women she has formed with the help of several not-for-profit organizations. These organizations support women who are survivors of domestic and gender based violence.