Tell us about your creative process. What drives your practice?

The urgency of an enquiry and the joy of making equally drive my practice. The enquiry is centred around the complexity of a caste identity. I was born in India into the Dalit, or so-called Untouchable caste yet I was raised in Australia, removed from the implications of this historically loaded identity. My enquiry entails every question that arises from this dual experience of generational trauma and the deep knowledge that I can never be in the lowest rung of any hierarchy. I question this inheritance, I research and investigate this history, I create from it and I find in myself how to communicate to those who have never known and those who have never wanted to know. 

To face the fierce, gut-wrenching reality of caste violence, especially in India today, my art practice is where I return to my own body memory, my own history. It is instinctual, grounded and where I find my freedom.

Your work pushes the limits of conventional printmaking through both materials and process, could you expand on the role of materiality in your practice and why you have chosen printmaking as your medium?

Materiality is the shared language of humanity. Many people who see the work do not know the burden of caste, but they understand the grit, the abrasiveness, the lusciousness of the materials I choose. It is our shared history, whether it be ancient metals, earthy pigments, natural fabrics, it is the point of entry to the work and into an unknown story.  

I choose printmaking because beyond all the technicalities of process, is play. It is like learning a science and in the experimentation I am free to change all the variables; it is alchemical. I trained as a printmaker, yet I do not think most of what I do would even be considered printmaking these days!

Are there any female printmakers and/or artists that influence you?

Too many. There are many female artists I love. When I see their work I can understand what led them to that piece, as if I had made it. I feel this way with Mira Schendel. 

However, my greatest influencers at present are writers. They spark my imagination and their words are the substance of my art. I am reading the first generation of Dalit Feminist literature including Babytai Kamble, Urmila Pawar and will read the work of subsequent generations. A chance meeting with Dr. Kanchana Mahadevan alerted me to the importance of discovering this history for myself. First and foremost Dr B.R Ambedkar, Namdeo Dhasal, Daya Pawar, Anand Teltumbde, Suraj Yengde, Meena Kandasamy. Male and female, I stand on the shoulders of giants. 

Finally, what exciting projects are you working on at the moment?

I am processing a deceivingly small book, The Prisons We Broke by Babytai Kamble (written in 1986 and translated into English in 2008), the first autobiography written by a Dalit woman. It has struck my core. It follows every way we have been distracted, the delusions, the poverty, the dirt and filth of our ancestors’ livelihoods. Somehow our iron souls have resisted and survived. It will be the basis for the next shows. I am interested in worship and devotion; I think of the stone idols we have bowed down to, all that we have placed before ourselves. Every nation has their gods. This will culminate into an exhibition in June. I am also interested in working with raw cow hide because there is no animal more politicised and divisive than the cow in modern India, especially in caste politics. Each project is a new question.

You can catch Kirtika’s work at Gallery Lane Cove + Creative Studios in her solo exhibition ‘Uppercase’ until 18 January 2020.