Watching his mother shop for saris in Satara, Maharashtra, sparked a lifelong fascination with clothes in Rohit Mane. Originally bound for a career in medicine, he eventually managed to convince his parents to allow him to study fashion design at Pearl Academy in Delhi, before heading to Nottingham Trent University as an exchange student.
Keerthana Kunnath made a similar journey. Leaving her hometown of Kozhikode, Kerala, to study fashion and lifestyle accessory design at NIFT Bengaluru, before arriving at image- making while at the London College of Fashion. Today, both live in London and have built practices that challenge the rules around women’s bodies through fashion and photography. Mane, whose work fuses South Asian references with dystopian aesthetics, often uses his own body as the canvas for his hyper-feminine designs, heavily inspired by his Indian heritage. Kunnath, through her ongoing project Not What You Saw, turns her lens towards female bodybuilders in South India, documenting the female form beyond conventional ideals of femininity. Together, their work asks how the rules around women’s bodies are resisted and remade. In a conversation that oscillates between banter and heartfelt confessions, the two London-based creatives trace the roots of this preoccupation.
Vogue India: You centre the female body from very different angles in your practices. What compelled you to explore it?
Rohit Mane: I grew up in Satara with just my mother and my sister, spending a lot of time together in a society that was very controlling about what women wear. I always had a rebellious streak. I wanted to create something that represented my art but also made a statement against those standards.
Keerthana Kunnath: I grew up in Kerala, watching Malayalam cinema and reading local magazines, and so many of the narratives were demeaning towards women. They gave us this template of what a ‘good woman’ was supposed to be, which never aligned with my own understanding of womanhood. Photography became the medium through which I could explore these questions I had. I was scrolling through Instagram when I came across a female bodybuilder from Kerala. Coming from that environment and pushing against everything, you are meant to feel radical. I wanted to know more about their journeys, and that’s how this series began.
Vogue India: How do you navigate the line between appreciation and objectification when working with the female body?
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: vogue.in
