In his curatorial note Bose Krishnamachari writes:
Mahalakshmi Kannappan’s practice unfolds in layers at once; sculptural, abstract, and deeply process-oriented. Originally from Tamil Nadu and now based in Singapore, she creates works that are grounded in the materiality of graphite and wood, while evoking the delicacy of torn or assembled paper. What first appeared to me as fragile sheets, stacked and layered, revealed themselves upon closer knowledge to be sculpted wooden surfaces coated with specially prepared graphite paste.
‘Bloody Dark Body’-this transformation of matter is at the heart of her sculptures. It is that body resists the pedestal, standing on its own as sculpted form; falling, folding, and asserting itself as both object and layered process. Black, the mother of all colours, is central to Mahalakshmi’s work. In her hands, its many shades become a language of marks- covered memory, time, and transformation. The darker tones / tints suggest depth and permanence, whilelighter gradations hint at movement and flux. This gradation allows her to balance permanence with impermanence or change, solidity with fragility, presence with absence. Her inspiration flows from nature, from everyday forms, and from the textures of life itself. Yet in her work, these forms are not imitated but transformed; transcending their ordinariness into new vocabularies of abstraction.
Each layer is a record of process, a celebration of touch, and a meditation on the relationship between stability and instability. As a woman sculptor, Mahalakshmi brings a rare sensitivity to material wings and body. Her works are tactile poems, where graphite and wood cease to be mere media and instead become carriers of memory, pulps, and time. She produces a new body, language of abstraction; layered, sculpted, and profoundly human-that speaks to both the depth of the past and the urgency of the present.
