First published 2025
Meena Kandasamy stands before the Mithuna couple, a seventeenth-century ivory carving from Tamil Nadu that shows two lovers in embrace. The sculpture sits in a museum, removed from its origins, beautiful and troubling at once. Kandasamy refuses to see only romance in the carved figures. She asks who made this object, under what conditions, from which social position. The questions multiply as she traces how caste and class shaped both the creation and the viewing of art. Her investigation moves between personal memory and political analysis, between the intimate space of desire and the institutional power of museums. She writes through Twitter posts, academic arguments, poetry, and memoir, letting each form reveal different truths about love, labor, and cultural ownership. The sculpture becomes a starting point for examining who gets to love freely and who bears the cost of artistic creation. Kandasamy connects the seventeenth-century carving to contemporary struggles over decolonization and cultural restitution.
Genres: art, art-history, academic, cultural-studies
Vibes: intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: personal-memory, political-analysis
Setting: Tamil Nadu
Period: Seventeenth Century
48 pages · Paperback · Diaphanes