UNLEARNING THE DRESS CODE

Kallol Datta's latest show at Experimenter Colaba in Mumbai turns garments into living archives of silence, control, and resistance

- Words ARANYAA CHOWDHURY Photograph KALLOL DATTA AND EXPERIMENTER

Walking into 'Volume IV: Truths, Half-Truths, Half-Lies, Lies' at Experimenter Colaba feels less like entering a gallery and more like stepping into a quiet confrontation. There are no bold declarations or didactic wall texts. What you'll find instead are textile sculptures — disjointed, reconstructed, and layered with references that span centuries. You may not immediately understand what you're looking at. That's exactly the point.

The work began with a text. In 2022, artist and clothes-maker Kallol Datta was researching in a library in London when he stumbled upon the writings of Ban Zhao — China's first known female historian. The excerpt, written around the Han dynasty, is a prescriptive guide to womanhood. It outlines everything from how women should speak and behave to how often they should bathe. “My immediate reaction was disbelief,” Datta tells us. “The texts felt alarmingly current. You could expect similar words in a press release today.”