rucha kulkarni

“Maker Absent”, 2025

In MAKER ABSENT, Rucha foregrounds female makers, often invisible within capitalist and patriarchal frameworks. Through semi-transparent quilted textiles layered over paintings, she evokes a haunting interplay of light and shadow - revealing wile obscuring.

The work is a critique of the status of and devotion to beautiful handmade objects that are fetishized, while the women who produce them are nameless and invisible, reduced to production workers. It honors these makers by exposing the systematic denial of their existence. Rucha confronts viewers with the mutual contradictions of value, visibility and gender labor. This installation is both a tactile archive and a silent rebellion against the structures that hide the bodies behind the craft.