Nangeli, 2025, Oil & Charcoal on Linen; 24 x 36 inches
A Tax Paid in Flesh
Breast Tax — Caste, Gender & the Price of Dignity
In early-19th-century Travancore, Kerala, Mulakkaram (the breast tax) forced lower-caste women to pay for the right to cover their bodies. This work centers Nangeli, who cut off her breasts in protest—an act of refusal absent from official archives but alive in oral histories.
Through paintings, sculpture, video, and material-based installations, A Tax Paid in Flesh examines caste, labor, and erasure. Clay breasts, withered banana leaf, turmeric, and coconut coir evoke how caste and patriarchy police the female body—and how resistance survives in skin, memory, and inherited scar tissue.
By reclaiming marginalized histories often excluded from archives, the project resonates with global struggles for dignity and justice, opening space for critical dialogue and collective remembrance.
Not-enoughness travels: Not Brown enough in Delhi, India, not Black enough in Brooklyn, USA, Not White enough in Boston, USA
—same caste code, new ZIP…
Paintings (2024-25)
Molachu Peyyum, 2025, Oil on Linen; 24 x 36 inches
Hope, 2025, Oil on Linen; 36 x 24 inches
Nangeli, 2025, Oil & Charcoal on Linen; 24 x 36 inches
Reclamation; Rebirth , 2025, Oil on Linen; 36 x 24 inches
The Sacred Thread, 2025, Cotton Thread, Oil & Acrylic on Linen; 36 x 24 inches
Strings of Silence; 2025, Watercolor on Paper; 11 x 17 inches
Kali in the Making, 2025, Watercolor on Paper; 11 x 17 inches
The BreastTax (Diptych), 2024, Oil & Charcoal on Linen; 24 x 72 inches
Stop Motion Animation
The Price of Dignity, 2025, Clay, banana leaf, rice, and natural pigments (See More in Installation View)
