Awards & Recognition

Awarded at the French Fashion Awards 2025, KAALI, from the Black Lioness series, confronts the formidable and uncompromising manifestation of Goddess Kaali — understood within Hindu traditions as an expression of Shakti, the primordial feminine power, and as a force associated with time, destruction, death, and transformation.

Central to the work is the relationship between Kaali and kāla — time. Time is impartial and inescapable: everything that comes into existence must eventually transform, disappear, or return to its source. Through this understanding, Kaali’s fearsome imagery is interpreted not simply as violence, but as a profound confrontation with mortality, impermanence, and the inevitable passage of time.

This philosophy is translated into the sculptural language of the artwork through motifs associated with Kaali’s traditional iconography. The garland of severed demon heads becomes one of its defining elements, serving as a symbolic reminder of death, the destruction of destructive forces, and the transient nature of worldly existence. Rather than functioning merely as ornament, these forms carry the conceptual narrative of the work.

The head motifs were individually developed and constructed within the studio before being assembled into a dimensional garland around the body. Their repetition creates an imposing sculptural rhythm, transforming symbolic imagery into an architectural element of the silhouette.

A commanding palette of black and gold reinforces the work’s intensity, while contrasting materials — including ultra-glossy four-way stretch latex — create tension between the body and the surrounding sculptural structures. Premium nylon monofilament was experimentally manipulated to develop an unconventional textile language, contributing transparency, volume, movement, and structural complexity to the work.

Approximately 75 percent of the construction was completed through hand-sewing. Multiple layers and individually constructed components were meticulously assembled by hand, making labour, repetition, and endurance fundamental to both the physical construction and conceptual character of the artwork.

Through mythology, symbolism, experimental materiality, and intensive hand craftsmanship, KAALI presents destruction not simply as an ending, but as part of an eternal process of change. The work ultimately becomes a meditation on time itself — impartial, inevitable, destructive, and transformative — and on the immense feminine force that exists beyond it.