Omama Mahmood

Dupatta As Calendar

The calendar was a covenant between the land and those who worked it, a way of knowing when to sow and when to reap. In neoliberal society, the calendar is a ledger of debt, ceaseless growth we are forced to subscribe to. This calendar, printed with cyanotype, takes the form of a dupatta— a traditional South Asian shawl: it does not track productivity, it does not count down, it drags. Time was never something to be spent, but something to be worn, to be carried, to be lived.

“Using the process of alternative printing—not just for the visually striking aesthetics of it, but because it forces you to slow down and make peace with taking your time...”