Born in 1977, Lavanya Mani obtained her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in painting from the Sir J.J. School of Art in Mumbai. In 2001 she received her Ph.D from the Department of Art History & Aesthetics at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda.
Lavanya Mani’s multi-layered works are a collage of the artist’s thoughts and ideas expressed through a combination of several different media, most notably various textiles that she has dyed, printed or otherwise worked on. The traditional textile-crafts like kalamkari that she references along with her muted palette give the artist’s audiences a sense of nostalgia, while the iconic images she uses allude to very contemporary issues.
The artist’s held her first solo show, ‘In Praise of Folly’, at Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai, in 2009. Amongst the most recent group exhibitions in which her works have been featured are ‘Analytical Engine’ at Gallery Seven Art, New Delhi, and Bose Pacia, Kolkata, in 2009; ‘Meandering Membranes’ at Shrine Empire Gallery, New Delhi, in 2009; ‘Urgent: 10 ml of Contemporary Needed’ organized by the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art at Travancore Art Gallery, New Delhi, in 2008; ‘Inner Vision’ at the Guild Art Gallery, New York, in 2008; and ‘in-sid-er’ at Bodhi Art, Mumbai, in 2007.