Meet the Artist

Akash

Inbakumar

Textiles, Interdisciplinary

“Moonfall, a series of costume masks and hats that are imaginative interpretations of what people on the moon might look like. These costumes are inspired by my longing for companionship with the moon as the days become darker. Using black and white rope to represent the opposite sides of the moon, I then break that dichotomy by stitching them together with grey thread and using the act of tying to attach them together. The laborious hand-stitching of each piece is a ritual of devotion to the moon. The pieces are then coated with bee’s wax to add fragrance as a second offering, the use of incense is common in Hinduism and Buddhism as an offering to the gods; also adding a meditative fragrance. In return for these offerings, I ask to receive companionship and escape from isolation, these are granted to me in the making process as I am able to keep the moon in my thoughts as I am stitching. This has also informed the forms of these masks as I did not pre-plan the shapes, and instead embraced a fluid and haptic process.”

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Through my practice I explore labour, craft methodology, kinship, queerness, hybrids and the post-human through speculative-fiction/fabulations. Inspired by Donna Harraway’s book ‘Staying with the Trouble’, I focus on queering family structures through craft-kin as an alternative to human centered reproduction. These kin become distortions and interjections in contemporary colonial cultures and systems, providing new means to re-imagining power structures between humans and material. My kin often take form in wearable objects that allow me to transform the wearer into one of the inhabitants of these imagined worlds. These pieces often ask the wearer to adjust their body and senses to their needs, and in return are activated by being on the body, distorting the colonial understanding of textiles.
OCAD U - Faculty of Design
Material Art & Design
Major Completed, 2020
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